


He’s What?———ABANDONED ATM

by andathousandyearsmore



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: #mostpowerfulavenger, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Avengers Family, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, Cameos, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Dialogue Heavy, Domestic Avengers, Flirty Steve Rogers, Fluff, Friendly Breakups, Heavy Angst, How Do I Tag, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, I don’t even know, M/M, Maria Hill is a Good Bro, Memory Magic, Multi, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Other, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Multiple, POV Natasha Romanov, POV Outsider, POV Steve Rogers, POV Tony Stark, Piano Playing Pietro Maximoff, Pining, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Protective Avengers, Psychological Torture, Psychological Warfare, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is So Done, Sam Wilson is a Saint, Secret Relationships, So much angst, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Tries, Team as Family, Temporary Amnesia, Therapy, Tony Stark Has A Heart, When I Say Angst & Denial & Issues... I Mean It, post-Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, welcome to the world of good endings, why Are Halsey and Saoirse Ronan this story? why not?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andathousandyearsmore/pseuds/andathousandyearsmore
Summary: "Make it stop," Steve begs, his voice wrecked by his screams, "God, Wanda, make it stop.""I don't know!" Wanda responds almost helplessly, "I'm sorry, I'm trying, I need—"





	He’s What?———ABANDONED ATM

_____

"Hey, is there something wrong with Steve?" 

"He's literally in medical because he broke like, all his ribs, and you're asking me if there's something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with you, Stark?" 

"Fuck you too, _Barton_ , I'm just concerned. He's never been out this long."

"You? Concerned for Steve? Wow, this is my surprised face." 

"Bite me, Barton." 

"Where?"

_____ 

Steve woke up in an unfamiliar bed, regretting it the second he did. God, every single one of his ribs hurt, but he was going to be damned if that stopped him from finding out where he was. There were tubes and thing connected to him, he could feel that. He was in a hospital bed, okay, and there were things attached to him, and oh fuck, did he lose time again, did he? He needed to know, he needed to _know_ , he needed to get up and—

"Steve? Steve. Steve!" 

Someone kept calling for him. Who was calling for him? 

He opened his eyes, and saw both Bruce and an unfamiliar black man stand over him with matching faces of worry. It was the guy he didn't know. He was saying things. So many things. 

"Bruce," he said, though maybe it didn't come out right. He tried again. "Bruce." 

The other man shut up for a second. "Hey Bruce, he's trying to call you." 

"Bruce," Steve said again. "Who's this? He's hot. Hey. You're hot. Very hot. So hot. Bruce, who's this?"

The other man blinked and stared at him like he was crazy. "Did he just say who's this? To me? Uh, Bruce?"

Steve wanted to ask the man what his name was, and also what was happening, but he felt drowsy again as Bruce said something. 

_____

"He _WHAT_?" 

"Steve just asked me what my name was while telling me I'm hot."

"You're kidding me. You're fucking with me."

"That would be Tony, first. And second, as much as I love messing with you, I am not kidding." 

"Stevie has amnesia? I-what? What?" 

"He also tried to hit on me. I think that's concerning too, because he's str—" 

“Why did you just stop talking? Str what?"

"Straight. I was trying to say straight. But I actually have no clue." 

"He is. He... is, right? He would have told me, right? He tells me everything."

_____

Steve woke up again and saw Tony's frowning face. And Natasha's neutral face that might be frowning, he didn't know.

"Tony. Tasha," he said, smiling because he didn't feel pain at all. "M'on the good drugs." 

Tony started to laugh loudly, and Steve winced at how loud the noise was. Maybe his head was hurting and the drugs helped. 

"Yes, you are," Tony grinned brightly, and Steve tried to mimic how bright it was. 

"Do you know what happened?" Natasha asked. Her voice was quiet. Soft. Like silk. And his pillow. And his bed. Marshmallow. 

Steve tried to think. He thought of marshmallows again. He was hungry. Wait. He had been eating. Something good. Spicy.

"Steve. Steve," Tony said, clapping his hands. Steve smiled again. "What do you remember?"

"Don' know," he said, and it didn't bother him. He felt like that should bother him. Maybe. 

_____

Tony rubbed his face and wondered how the hell they had gotten here. Not only did Steve break his bones well enough that the serum was draining his body of nutrients—so much that Bruce had stuck about a dozen IVs stuck in him—Steve now apparently had amnesia. Steve apparently had no memory of the past two years, which mean the last thing he remembered was some random day in the summer of 2013. Well before SHIELD fell, the return of HYDRA, and Ultron. He had no clue who Sam was, or Pietro, Wanda, and Vision, and he didn't know Bucky was back. Fantastic. There was just so much there he was missing. 

And then there was the bit where Steve just kept on hitting on Sam like a dying man, despite the fact that Steve was supposed to be unequivocally straight. At least, that was what Tony told himself because Steve really didn't talk about his love life, mainly because it was non-existent. Also because Tony desperately needed that to be the reason that Steve never responded to any of Tony's flirting/gestures. 

But there were bigger things to worry about. Steve's brain scans didn't show anything strange, which meant the amnesia must have come from whatever blasted into him hard enough that it broke his ribs. Fucking magic and wizards and sorcerers and witches. Besides Wanda, now, because she had looked through Steve's brain and confirmed that there was something magical blocking a section of his memory. She kept on apologizing that she didn't know how to fix it without being fully confident it wouldn't fuck Steve over more. 

And since Steve was going to be discharged tomorrow, he was going to be in for a shock. A big, two-year kind of shock.

_____

Steve couldn't breathe. 

_____

"This is a joke right? It's not 2015?"

_____

Steve couldn't breathe.

_____

"No. No, I didn't lose two years, I didn't. No."

_____

Steve ran out of the room and found that he was completely lost inside this so-called Avengers Compound. But he figured that a place like this would have a gym on the main floor, and he found it. He just needed to punch something. And hard.

The bags here were significantly stronger, like Tony had figured out better ways to make a bag. He pulled his punches a little less. The bag showed wear. He didn't pull them at all after that, but the bag broke within a punch and a half. He saw another one, looking a little more sturdier and completely unfamiliar. 

He wondered what was happening. 

_____

"Well, that went really well."

"Shut your whore mouth, Clint." 

"Hey! I—"

"Tony, Clint, if one of you says something else, I'm shoving my knife through both of you." 

"He didn't react well to the news from the four of us, how do we even begin to explain everything else?"

"Well, _doctor_ , between the two of us, you've got seven PhDs and I've got a few more years of murder; we'll figure it out." 

"In a few sciences and mathematics! Not in... this." 

_____

Steve needed to find his way back. There were showers in the room next to the gym, and he apparently already had clothes there. That fit as well as they could. Nothing he recognized, though. The showers were comfortably adjusted though, like he had asked for some of the details himself. 

"JARVIS?" Nothing. "JARVIS?" 

Everything was just off. Why wasn't JARVIS responding? What had happened in two years that—no, it just couldn't have been two years. He refused to accept it, and yet the signs were all around him. 

_____

Steve looked like a bewildered child when they started to catch him up on everything that happened during 2013 and early 2014. They hadn't gotten him to the Lemurian Star yet, and Natasha wanted to see what his reaction would be this time around. It was going to be a stunning one, given the fact he was about to hear about the Winter Soldier. 

She was the one who was going to have to explain everything about the Lemurian Star and after, given that she was the only one out of herself, Tony, Clint, and Bruce who had been with him there. 

_____

Bucky was alive. Bucky had been tortured for seven decades. Bucky was here. Bucky was—oh god. 

_____

"Can I—can I talk to him?"

"There's a few things you need to know, Golden Delicious, sit down."

_____

Steve couldn't breathe.

_____

"Where's Maria?" 

"Working for Pepper. Speaking of Pepper, she says that if you'd like to, you can join her at the opening of the new exhibit at MOMA. You’re art friends."

"Romanoff, why are you talking to Pep?" 

"We're friends." 

_____

Steve thinks he's lost it. Maybe old age has finally caught up to him. Dark Elves? London? He didn't do anything to help Thor?

_____

"And that brings us up to here. Now."

Steve blinks. He thinks he has a headache, because all he does is nod numbly. 

"I know this was a lot," Bruce apologizes, looking like he fully meant it. "It's been an eventful two years." 

"I—let me get this straight," Steve says. "I lost the last two something years because an Asgardian woman that Thor jilted wanted to take revenge on Thor, even though he wasn't here _and was literally on Asgard_? With a spell that was strong enough that it broke my ribs and made me forget about SHIELD-HYDRA, Sam, Bucky, the Winter Soldier, Dark Elves, Ultron, Pietro, Wanda, Vision, new SHIELD, Coulson and his new team, and literally everything in between? Okay. Okay. I'm just going to go... punch something again."

His steps are clumsy and unsteady as he walks, but Steve just tries to keep his legs from buckling the entire time through. 

_____

"How did he take the news?

"Not well, but he knows your name now. You're not hot guy anymore."

"Ha ha, Tony. You're strangely zen about this. FRIDAY's watching him, isn't she? Does he know about her?" 

"Yeah, I told him about J and Vis. He seemed torn up about it."

_____

"I—I didn't tell him about us yet." 

"Okay. That's fine, he's probably stunned that I'm here."

"It's... you're sure that he wouldn't... right? No need for sensitivity training?"

"Steve? You know he ran part of the scene back in the day, right?" 

" _What_? Are you sure he's not completely straight? Positively?"

"Look, I'm not even sure Steve likes _people_ like that. Besides Sam, apparently. Unless that was to mess with him for fun."

"Oh."

_____

"Hi, you're Sam."

"Hi, you're Steve, point is?" 

"Now I know why we're friends."

"Friends? Friends? Bitch, I'm your best friend this side of the century." 

"In that case, I've been reliably told I tried to hit on you, so, sorry about that."

"It was cute. Drugged Steve has more game than normal Steve, though."

"Oh? Is that how it is?"

"That's how it is."

_____

"Hi."

"Hey Steve. What do you want to know?"

"I...  tell me what you can do."

"Um. I can manipulate energy and matter, I guess."

"Wait, then is your brother the f—"

"Yes. I can show you what I do though."

”Damn.”

_____

"I heard you have been talking to everyone here."

"I talked to your sister and Sam."

"Is there anything particular that you want?"

"Uh, no. I—how fast can you run? Ever tried yo-yo-ing?" 

"Thank god, now this I can do."

_____

"You're... Vision."

"Indeed, Captain."

"Do you want to bake a cake with me? Wanda mentioned you had an interest in... cooking."

"I would like nothing more, Captain."

"Great! Where's the kitchen?"

_____

Natasha gives him a flat glare from across the room, her nail lightly tapping against a singular petal on a flower. She looks vaguely murderous, as she always does whenever Steve's hurt and she can't immediately do something to help him. Actually, all of them look a little on edge, since Steve seems to be taking this extremely well, besides his initial two rounds of destroyed bags. Now, he's just living like he's accepted there are holes in his memory and is moving on. They had all thought he would be wary of Sam, the twins, and Vision, but it turns out he's taken to them like instant friends.

It's just that he hasn't made more than a first effort to talk to him. Bucky doesn't know how to feel about that, especially when Sam had told him that Steve's waiting for Bucky. Apparently, Steve thinks he's done something wrong since Bucky has been avoiding him. Bucky thinks that Steve feels extremely guilty over HYDRA and that Steve thinks that they haven't been talking at all, ever since Bucky came back.

Still, Steve is taking this extremely well, even though they all worried he was going to hate losing time again. 

Nope. Not even a bit. The question remains: _how_?

_____

"Sam said that Steve hasn't been really acting like himself."

"He's actually really happy. Like there's no weight on his shoulders. But it's only been, for him, a year since he's been defrosted, and let me tell you, he was not like this when it was actually a year."

"Sam's a little worried."

"I think you should talk to him." 

"I don't know what to say."

"Non-sequiturs always work."

"Yeah, for you."

"I'm hurt."

"Go fuck yourself."

"That's what I have you for."

"Oh lord, is it too late to repent for my sins now?"

_____

Steve thinks that he's doing pretty well. Sure, two something weeks ago he was crying with a tub of ice cream and reality TV—because he's gotten with the times, thank you very much—but all things considered, he's doing fantastic. Now, when it's two weeks and two years later, it turns out he actually has a life here. Actually, he's pretty sure he's home, in a slightly-closer-future that's still a better future. Somewhere along everything that's happened, he's friends and _family_ with the people from before, and his newer team members. 

Sure, it's bothering him that's he can't remember two extremely eventful years, but honestly? In the grand scheme of everything? He can probably watch it all and piece it all together if he really wanted to. At least he was there for those years and didn't lose them altogether. Wanda says that they'll all come back sometimes, but she doesn't know when or how. Which is better than nothing (even though sometimes literally could mean when he's dying). 

_____

"Hey FRIDAY?"

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Where is Steve?" 

"Reading the Hobbit over by the kitchen." 

"Okay." 

_____

Steve's back is to him when Bucky enters the room, but by how Steve immediately stops swearing at something (not the book, which is on a coffee table), Bucky knows that Steve can tell he's here. 

"Nat, I can hear your footsteps," Steve calls out, still staring at something in the oven with an intense focus. 

"Not Natasha," Bucky says, because what else is he supposed to say? "But you can hear my footsteps?"

Steve whirls around like Pietro's pulled him that fast. His eyes are blown wide, but Steve just stands there, kind of frozen. 

"That's gotta be a lie," Bucky continues. It's a little weird how still Steve is right now, with that look. "No fucking way."

And then he regrets calling Steve a statue, because he blinks and then Steve's hugging him so tight that he actually can't breathe, Jesus fucking Christ, how hadn't his reflexes caught Steve before? Also, Steve usually gives really good hugs, which he knew,, if he can forget about the whole rib cage thing right now. But since when did Steve become Thor? Ow, his _ribs_.

"I didn't—I thought maybe I was hallucinating that they told me you were—I don't—I'm sorry—I'm so sorry—I let you fall—I shouldn't have—I'm so sorry—I—you're alive and I don't—you're alive! I didn't know if I was—oh god," Steve gasps out, like he's a dying man in need of air. Which is funny, because Bucky's the one that needs air, and oh no, is that water he feels? Oh no. Is Steve crying? Did he... did he break Steve?

Steve lets go of him, and then sniffles. "Sorry," he says, wiping away a few tears with a sheepish grin. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing." Steve sniffles again, this time catching the rest of his tears. He's splotchy pink, just like he always used to look before the serum, whenever he was sick. 

"Are you... okay?" Bucky asks cautiously, tamping down thoughts of shoving a tissue box in Steve's face or grabbing an inhaler. Where the hell are these coming from now?

Steve laughs and Bucky wonders once again if he's broken Steve. "I just... I was going to be so smooth and I had a plan, and then I ended up crying and babbling."

"Buddy, you've never been smooth a damned day in your life," Bucky says. 

Steve gasps like he's been mortally wounded, the little shit. "I don't know. I could have been smooth one out of those seven hundred something days I apparently missed out on." Great, now he's making jokes out of it. Yeah, this is Steve. 

"748," Bucky rolls his eyes, "It's literally 365 times 2 and then you add 18." 

All he gets is an unimpressed glare. "And to think I was worried about seeing your ugly mug again. Should'a known you'd tell me _math_ again. It's been seventy years, and math's all you got." 

"It's been 68 for you," Bucky corrects, smirking. 

"Shut the fuck up, jerk." 

"Punk."

_____

"Don't touch the cookies Clint." 

"How'd you even know?"

"Please, like I don't remember you stealing food before it was done, or cooled." 

"Well these look cooled."

"They're not frosted."

"Ooh."

"Don't touch the bowl of frosting, Clint." 

_____

Apparently they have weekly movie nights now, which he didn't know because they missed it last week (he feels a little guilty). Apparently it was his idea in the first place, and it happened to be his turn in picking the movie. Predictably, he has to search Google for movies, and comes across the movie version of the book that the elderly woman across the hall from him three weeks ago (of course it’s actually two years ago) always cussed out. Whoever thought it was a good idea to recreate that, and turn it into the _full fucking trilogy_ needed to calm down. 

Scrolling through the other options, he sees a familiar face that he knew well. Oh. Saoirse! Saoirse was apparently in a movie called _Brooklyn_ about immigrants. Steve blinks once at the details, and then blinks again. Oh hell she didn't. There was no way she hadn't talked to him about this—too fucking bad he couldn't remember any of it. 

It was a little known fact that he was good friends with her, which started out as a hey, social media is somehow linking our shared Irish ancestry to directly mean that I’m your grandfather or great-uncle or something. They bonded over their shared love for making fun of that viral Twitter post, the Hobbit, and admittedly, their Irish-ness, and then never fell out of contact. Actually, he wasn't sure if any of the Avengers particularly knew, unless he broke that secret. 

"Hey," he says, a bright smile on his face. "There's a pretty good movie called _Brooklyn_."

Tony shoots him a dark look. "We _know_ , Steve."

"You've actually watched it," Sam says, and there's something in that smile that's Steve's not getting. "Only one of us to watch it, actually. The rest of us plebeians have to wait until it comes out in normal theatres."

"How have I—" Steve starts to ask.

"Saoirse Ronan asked you during an interview to come to the Sundance premiere, the interview clip spread its way out, and then I jokingly posted from your account saying yes. You ended up going," Tony says, but Steve has a feeling that it happened much more differently than that. 

"Oh. Well, there's... Room? Tangerine? I—they sound fine enough." 

_____

Steve would have to be oblivious not to see the looks between Wanda and Vision when they think no one else is looking. He would have to be a spectacular idiot not to see the relationship between Tony and Bucky—recent, but familiar enough that he thinks that these two probably had been pining and dancing around each other until someone had staged some sort of an intervention. Surprisingly enough, he thinks that it hadn't been Natasha who had gotten these two out of their dance. 

He has a feeling that it had been _him_ who snapped and did it, out of annoyance at being the middleman plaything that the two of them used to hide behind. It sounds extremely stupid, especially when put in the context of his feelings for Bucky (ever-present since the early thirties) and his feelings for Tony (he has no clue when that started). But honestly, out of all the dumb things he's done, and out of his own knowledge of his love life, this wouldn't even be top five in stupidity. Setting up two people he has feelings for is practically nothing compared to the entire _Peggy shot at the shield_ story. 

He's actually really happy for them; they deserve happiness. Surprisingly, he's not bitter about it at all. 

He has a feeling that there's a reason that he's not bitter.

_____

"I'm not seeing anyone, right?" Steve casually asks one night when he's sitting on the floor right next to Clint's legs, leaning against the sofa. He's sketching right now, a casual picture of Peggy smirking a trademark look, with a pencil that's far too thick for finer details. "Natasha, pencil?" 

"No, you're not," she responds, chucking the pencil next to her coffee table at his head. He catches it and gives her a smile of thanks, going back to defining her nose. "You didn't let me set you up with anyone. Why; are you interested?"

"No, I'm just curious," he says without even looking up. He hopes she doesn't ask why the thought's popped into his head right now. Steve wants her (and anyone else who might ask) to just see the sketch of Peggy and then make her own assumptions. "Feels like there's a few things I should probably ask, a few things about my own life I should know."

"Well, you're single, best friends with an up-and-coming singer named Halsey and also BFFs with Obama, have two public social media accounts and one private one you won't tell us about, and you're horrible at lying," Tony bluntly says from where he's lying down on the couch opposite Clint. Well, his head is in Bucky's lap, but his feet are in the opposite armrest so technically lying on both Bucky and the couch. 

Steve laughs. "Is this a strange version of two truths and a lie? With three truths and a lie or something? Or two and two." 

"Nope, all these are all true," Pietro says, and when Steve looks up, he sees that Pietro is playing some hand game with Clint, one that Wanda is amusedly watching. 

"Okay, I'm single, that's the truth. How did I end up with three social media accounts and two close friendships?" He doesn’t give away the one about him being horrible at lying. Steve knows he can lie like the best of them.

_____

**To H**

Hi 

**From H**

YOU HAVE AMNESIA WHAT ARE YOU DOING I SAW THE AVENGERS TWEET 

**To H**

We're friends, right? Like I don't just randomly have the release date for BADLANDS on my phone?

**From H**

yeah but holyyyyyy shit are you ok? also i can't believe you did that. that's kinda cute.

**To H**

I think I'm fine... magic's just weird :( 

**From H**

You're probably wondering why you have a calendar date thing?

**To H**

yeah

**From H**

long story short you liked my blue hair and asked me how to donate money to homeless shelters in brooklyn

**To H**

um okay?

**From H**

and you liked my music so now we're kind of friends!! and you wanted to listen to badlands the second it came out because you're impatient... i don't really know

**To H**

you know more than i do 🤷🏼

_____

"I don't think Amora hit him with an amnesia spell."

"What the fuck is it, then?"

"Did you know that his stress levels are at an all-time low?"

"Wilson, anybody can tell you that looking at him. He wasn't this stress less even when he was high in Brooklyn."

"Little Steve got high?"

"Asthma cigarettes, heroin syrup and tablets... they were all cheap." 

"O...kay. But I think Amora hit him with something that made him stress-less."

"Why the hell would she do that?"

"To weaken him, to weaken his authority and how well he works. Thor technically defers to him, why not weaken that?" 

"Oh."

"Yeah, and the last day Steve remembers happens to be the day before he accepted the permanent D.C. position and move at SHIELD. Think Amora had to erase his memory to erase so much stress?"

"Oh. That... makes sense, even if I don't want it to. Damn." 

_____

_Falling. He is falling. Not crashing._

_He is surrounded by water. No ice._

_He is losing consciousness._

_______

_"You're my mission!"_

_____

_"On your left!"_

_______

_A shield—red, white, and blue contrasting black and silver—is caught by a masked man with a metal arm._

_It is thrown back._

_______

_A bald man is kicked off of a building by a red-haired woman._

_He is saved by a man with wings._

_______

_"Lip piercing, right?"_

_____

Steve stumbles into the kitchen, blinking and trying to make sense of the strange dreams he just had—puzzle pieces of what he knows to be part of what happened during SHIELDRA? They wouldn't make too much sense if he didn't know beforehand what they were supposed to be, but they might... they might be his memories. Context-less and gap-filled as they might be, he thinks that's they're real. 

Automatically making himself a cuppa, he leans against the counter top and stares at the floor, trying to think about how exactly what he remembers fits with the narrative he knows. Steve doesn't pay attention to how the kettle's already been made—usually he has to boil his water beforehand—and just tries. Everything is hazy, and completely out of order, but they're puzzle pieces. Puzzle pieces to a puzzle where the box with the full piece is long gone, yeah, but he's stubborn enough to figure it out.

He has to figure it out. He owes it to himself, and the team to try.

It's actually at that point when he realizes that he's not alone in the room, that he notices the other Avengers that have been trying to capture his attention by talking to him or _at_ him. God, he thinks it was better that he didn't notice, because now that he has, everything hurts too much. His head is pounding, like he has a hangover, and everything is just too much.

"Morning," he says, finishing his cup of tea and setting it down on the counter. The clack of the porcelain against the marble make sure him wince, and maybe he just needs to sleep it away. "M'going back to bed."

He doesn't hear what anyone else says to him after that, not because he's ignoring them, but because his head is screaming. 

_____

_An empty city is floating above the world. It's falling._

_______

_"Imagine it."_

_______

_"God's righteous man."_

_______

_Wine is spilling onto a man, and he blinks to see that it is blood coming out of a gunshot. Everyone has bleeding wounds now, almost like they were given like red candy. He can see people dancing and fighting, and then he looks away, unable to distinguish the two. Something's wrong with him, something's wrong now, something's—_

_______

_"Ready for our dance?"_

_____

_"Where else am I gonna get a view like this?"_

_______

_The room is empty, and he is alone in the silence that could be. A banner is hanging slightly crooked. The chairs and the tables are neatly arranged. They have not been touched by anyone._

_______

_A drink is handed to him by the golden god of thunder. It is not meant for mortal men._

_____

" _I don't trust a man without a dark side."_

_____

He doesn't know what makes him go up to Steve's room, and maybe it's concern since Steve's slept all of yesterday and he hasn't surfaced once, or maybe it's the voice in his head that always tells him whenever something's wrong with Steve, but he goes. He also brings Tony with him, just in case this turns out to be a two-person kind of thing. And maybe just in case he isn't good enough to fix whatever's happening.

Either way, when he hears screaming that is very clearly Steve, he's glad that something's made him come up.

Tony gets FRIDAY to let them in, and he runs to where Steve's room, where Steve is yelling and thrashing, fighting something that he can't see. Bucky calls Steve's name over and over again, suddenly feeling helpless against Steve's nightmares, and curses. What does Steve do to him? He can't remember. He doesn't know; he's never paid attention. 

Bucky resolves to try and hold Steve down, so that Steve doesn't hurt himself or anything, an ether realizes that this harder than he's expected. As soon as he pins Steve's wrists down, Steve's legs kick their way up, and struggle to break all of him free. Bucky resorts to doing a half body sprawl trying to keep Steve down and safe, trying to get Steve to wake up. It's a little surprising how long it's taking, since Steve is usually such a light and easy sleeper. 

Steve suddenly startles awake, right when Bucky's taking a breath. For a second, he worries that Steve doesn't know who he is, since Steve seems ready to fight him and run. Then Steve relaxes under him and then sighs, blinking and breathing like he’s run a marathon in his old body. Steve sighs again, clearly shaking off his nightmare. 

"You know," Steve says, turning his waking grimace into an attempt at a smile. "If you pin me any harder to my bed like this, I might have to ask you to buy me breakfast." 

Bucky refuses to dignify that with a response, and instead stands up proper again. And then he realizes that Steve is, in fact, shirtless and only in boxers. He's not even going to ask what that's about. 

"You know, if you're going to start hitting on everyone at the Compound, no one is ever going to take you seriously when you say you don't want to date," Tony says, since he's great at non-sequiturs. “Or that you’re not interested at all.”

"You're just sad that I'm not with you," Steve retorts before he yawns and then stretches as he gets out of bed. Yup. Only boxers. That are bright pink and silver. Bucky isn't going to ask about that either. He also adamantly _does not_ stare. "But Buck's the possessive type, and I’m not touching that with a pole." 

He yawns again, and then blinks a few times in confusion, almost like he's trying to sort something out in his head. Surprisingly, Steve doesn't look like a guy who's had terrible nightmares, but a guy who's just trying to get through a confusing morning. That's not how this is supposed to work. But if Steve looks fine, then he isn't pushing it. 

Tony, on the other hand, squawks. "You know? Bucky, he knows!" 

Steve's about to say something, but his face horribly contorts. Before Bucky's stomach can drop at the change, Steve starts screaming and wincing like someone's tearing his mind apart. Bucky knows what that's like.

Steve shouldn't. 

_____

" _Make it stop_ ," Steve begs, his voice wrecked by screams, " _Please_ _,_ _Wanda_ , _make it stop_." 

"I don't know!" Wanda responds almost helplessly, "I'm sorry, I'm trying, I need—"

_____

He doesn't know what's happening to him. Everything is too hot, too bright, too loud, too painful one second, and then completely the reverse the next. Something is stabbing away at his head, he can feel something coursing through him that shouldn't be there. Not even the serum felt this invasive. He hadn't nearly screamed this much in pain, and back then, he didn't have a pain tolerance like he does now. 

_____

"What's happening to me?" Steve asks breathing heavily and trying to recover from his latest bout of the mind attacks. "Wanda. What do you all know?"

"Amora's spell didn't go after your memories," Wanda says, and she almost looks a little guilty as she says that. "I don't know what she did to you, I'm sorry."

He gives her a weak smile, and shakes his head like it's fine. "Do you why this is—?"

"I don't know how it was supposed to work, but the intent was to twist and scramble your brain and all of its functions so much that you would be dying a very slow, very painful death. Brains control everything from our heartbeats to how we feel pain, to how we move, to our memories, you know. I didn't realize it at the time, but the little pulse of magic I sent to you is the reason you don't have your memories. I think I contained the madness to a certain part of your hippocampus, the memory area, according to Bruce. And... if you've been feeling very calm and stress less, I think that was me too, sorry," she reveals, almost like she's hesitant to hear his response. 

Steve is a little glad that he's already sitting down, because that's a little too much to take in right now when's part of his head is throbbing already. He just nods again, winces, and says, "And now?"

She winces again. "I think... magic is adaptable, and it seems to me that hers is finding ways to move around my magic and uh... work around it." 

He wants to say something, and then suddenly everything is too bright and too hot and—

He can hear his own painfully loud screaming. He doesn't think she's there in the room again. 

_____

"Wait," she says, staring at the footage of Amora blasting Steve with her magic. "Amora is Asgardian, yes? And that seems to be a droplet of her blood, yes?"

"Great," she hears Tony mutter, "Asgardian blood magic." 

"We need Thor. And Loki," she says excitedly. "Because, and Loki would know better than I, royal Asgardian blood can break most Asgardian blood magic spells if they're used right! Loki would know how to fix this."

"Do we send a raven?" Bruce quietly asks to Natasha. “I don’t think he has a phone. I don’t think phones even work up in Asgard.”

"I'll call Darcy for Dr. Foster's Einstein rose thing," Sam says, sighing. "She knows what to do, right?" 

_____

“ _Fire now!”_

_______

_A stray heel is lying on the floor, and he is almost tripped by it. Almost. A woman, brunette, is laughing at him._

_______

_”He said a bad language word.”_

_______

_A woman is glaring murderously at a bag of chips as she is speaking into a phone quite angrily. When she is done, she begins to glare at him and he is laughing this time. She throws the bag at him. He is still laughing as she is ranting about governmental stupidity._

_______

_”He’s fast and she’s weird.”_

_______

_”How is working at SI?”_

_”If I go down in history for being the one to kill you, so be it.”_

_______

_He is smirking as a woman is in the process of telling him that she is all but legally married to her job. So is he._

_____

He wakes up and he is not alone. He is surrounded by people, all of whom he knows. And, for some reason, he is strapped down onto a bed with bonds he cannot break easily. They are familiar, and green—Hulk bonds. Hulk bonds that only Tony has. And that Tony only uses when he is there. 

He tries to calm himself down. There has to be a reason he’s here. It’s not as if he’s strapped down for absolutely no reason. Something... something must have happened. Where they _had_ to restrain him. God, what did he do? Oh no. 

“Steve!” Bucky says really loudly. Actually, Bucky’s probably yelling at this point. Oh. He’s yelling. They’ve all probably tried to get his attention already. 

“Bucky,” he says. “What?”

”You didn’t do anything,” Bucky says, shaking his head with a sad smile. “You’re talking out loud.” 

That explains absolutely nothing. If he didn’t do anything, then why is he here? He’s unstable, that’s why. 

“No you’re not,” Bucky says, and the winces when Steve just glares at him. “When you’re not in pain you’re not.” 

“I’m not in pain right now,” he says. 

“You will be,” another familiar voice says, and Steve blinks. Was that... Loki’s voice? What the hell was Loki doing here? Maybe he was hallucinating. 

“This is all too real,” Loki says. “And it will continue to be real unless you go back to sleep.” 

“I can’t just sleep on command,” Steve says. The last thing he hears is Loki sighing, and then everything fades to black. 

_____

The moment Steve wakes up is barely noticeable because he doesn’t wake up screaming or thrashing. No, Steve wakes up and then automatically stills his breathing and heart rate to make it seem like he is still sleeping. Steve doesn’t recognize where he’s sleeping. 

Before any of them can blink, he springs out of bed, holding a knife that no one knows where it came from. He’s this close to pressing it against Tony’s throat, but Steve’s eyes focus instantly, actually waking up.

The knife, ceramic, surprisingly does not break when he drops it. It does clatter loudly. 

“Sorry,” he says, all the fight leaving him like it hadn’t existed in the first place, “I—don’t know where I am.” 

“Guest room at the Compound,” Tony says dryly, acting unfazed from Steve’s knife. “Actually.”

”Why are you all here?” Steve asks. He pauses. Thinks. “What day is it?” 

“What day do you think it is?” Natasha asks levelly.

”I should be at medical right now,” Steve carefully says. “Since Amora just hit me with something. But I’m not. So. How long has it been?” 

“Not again,” Clint sighs from the corner. “Not this again.”

”Do you know who all of us are?” Sam asks. “And everything up to Amora?”

”Yes,” Steve says. “I do. Why?”

_____

Steve very carefully does not panic or even react. He very carefully does not lose his mind or punch bags. Instead, Steve just listens with a blank face, because he cannot let himself feel anything right now. 

When they’re done, he doesn’t do anything, doesn’t let himself think about how much pain he has gone through (and doesn’t remember) and stares. 

“Can I talk to Maria Hill for a second?” is the only thing he asks, because if what they’re saying about him missing so much time after Amora is true, then she thinks that he’s probably being an asshole to her. 

“Why?” Natasha asks. 

“I was supposed to,” he says. 

_____

“Rogers.” _Code: I’m not alone._

“Hill.” _Code: Neither am I._

“Status update?” _Code_ :  _Why are you calling?_

“Well, surprisingly not FUBAR.” _Code: Nothing work related. Personal call._

“TARFU?” _Code: Is there something wrong?_

“Maybe. Maybe not.” 

“State your issue, then.” _Code: What the fuck Rogers, why are you calling?_

“To confirm that debrief, even if I was supposed to do it a while ago.” _Code: To check up on you. To ask about you, since it’s been so long. I’m sorry._

“The next most convenient time for you.” _Code: I’m good._

“Alright. Have any news?” _Code: Have you kept tabs on the Avengers? On me?_

“Nothing worth noting.” _Code: Yes._

“Okay.”

_____

“A debrief?” 

“With Hill.” 

“What do Hill and _Fury_ need from him now? Does they even know about the Amora thing?”

“You posted a giant update to Twitter, Tony, how do they not?” 

“I said I’m sorry, already, but people needed to know...”

”So they can attack? Never mind, that’s for later.” 

“Oh god.” 

“Steve must need something from Hill if he called first.”

“It was the first thing he did, period.” 

“You’re going to help me find out.”

“I don’t have a choice. You’re a scary lady.”

 _____

Steve stares up at the ceiling from his bed. It’s 2015. Almost 2016. This he knows, because he’s lived through it. He’s watched—in a thoughtful, quick video that FRIDAY complied—just what he missed in the two weeks he forgot everything and feels like he’s lost more than two weeks. It’s ironic, that now he’s more bothered by missing two weeks than he was by missing two years. It’s crawls under his skin like a reminder that he’s always losing time somehow. 

It shouldn’t bother him as much as it does, and it’s incredibly stupid that he can’t even be normal enough to just go the fuck to sleep. He just can’t. Because all he’ll dream about is Amora’s leering face and the feeling of being lost. 

He doesn’t remember, technically, what the last two weeks were, but he can feel it. He can feel what havoc happened in his mind, feel the sudden panic he gets when something is just a little too bright or hot, feel the confusion of amnesia whenever he zones out. He can feel the moments of pain when all his receptors were dialed past what he could handle and the fear shooting in him when he was strapped to the table. But he can also feel the moments of not giving a single fuck that his life changed so much in the blink of an eye, and the moments where he laughed so hard it hurt, or even the moments of letting go of everything. 

Not being to place any of it haunts him, because he thinks he’s felt more emotions in the last two weeks than he’s let himself feel every since he woke up from the ice. All types of emotions, too. He wants to know where it all came from, if only to hold onto it. 

But he can’t. And so he can’t sleep. Funny how life works. 

_____

“Steve’s shut down completely.” 

“I know. It’s not anything related to magic.” 

“Is it bad that I wish it was?” 

“We could fix it if it was, and that’s what you’re thinking, so maybe not.” 

“I hate this. He hasn’t shut down this much since the Chitauri.” 

“I wouldn’t know. Pierce had me on ice during then.” 

“Asshole. Steve might as well have been on ice. I don’t think he thawed out fully.” 

“He’s always had a hard head though. His stupidass brain rattles in there.” 

_____

He’s lost. He’s not home here, at least not at the moment, not right now.

_____

Steve opens his sketchbook for the first time since Amora (that he can remember) and finds five new drawings in there, all captured with intimacy and careful lines. Peggy smirking, Bucky’s eyes crinkling with a smile, Natasha raising an eyebrow, Wanda and Pietro talking to each other, and Vision thinking. He tries to remember, desperately, the hours it must have taken to draw these, and comes up blank. 

 _It was only two weeks,_ he tries to tell himself. _So why does it hurt so much?_

He’s not happy, and he has no reason to not be happy. He has a life, friends, a _family_ ; what’s wrong with him? Why does it matter so much? It shouldn’t. 

He flips the page and finds a sixth sketch, only partly completed. But he knows exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be him. A self-portrait. Since when does he do those? And since when does he look like _that_? Like he’s... happy. 

Steve doesn’t even bother to careful tear the page out of his book before he throws it away and puts the book away, suddenly not in the mood to sketch either. 

_____

“Hey Maria. What’s up?” _Code: I’m alone, and no one’s listening._

“Do you think you’d like to have that debrief tonight?” _Code: sex?_

“Same place?” 

“Same place. And... you might be gone a few days, based on work.” 

“Counting on it.” 

_____

“Where’s Steve?” Tony asks FRIDAY, sitting up on the sofa where he had previously been lying on it. 

“His bike, cellphone, wallet, and watch are in a parking garage in Washington D.C. He had packed clothes with him to last a week, however,” FRIDAY responds. “His shield remains in the compound.” 

Natasha refuses to start worrying right now. “When did he leave?” 

“His rooms went into a blackout period at the sound of a phone ring, and once the period was lifted, I believe he started packing,” FRIDAY explains, almost apologetically. Natasha normally likes FRIDAY, but she feels a little irritation that FRIDAY hasn’t quite figured out how to subvert commands like JARVIS could. 

“Pull up his call logs,” Tony commands, and it’s clear that _he’s_ panicking a little.

Sam peers through them, a frown on his face. “Nothing. Nada. No one called him.” 

“Burner phone,” Clint and Bucky say simultaneously, the latter walking into the room with a tracker and a note in his hand. 

Tony all but grabs the tracker from Bucky’s hands, and inspects it. He then grabs the note. 

“A tracker in my shoes? My watch? Wallet? Try harder, or better yet, don’t try at all,” Tony reads. Natasha frowns, because she’s almost positive that the shoes had probably tipped Steve off to ditch everything (including the bike) at the garage so they couldn’t have his exact location. Though the choice of D.C. is very telling. 

_____

“We should probably stop,” Maria says when both of them are lying in bed, spent. For maybe the third time that day.

“That’s what you said the last three times,” Steve merely says. 

She huffs a wry smile. “I don’t hear disagreement.” 

Steve turns to glance at her. “I’m not disagreeing.” 

“It’s funny, because no one else would ever say that,” she says. “Not to sex, and that makes me want to say yes again.”

This time, Steve laughs a little. “No one makes you do anything you don’t want to do in this area,” he says. “And both of us know it.” 

“Still,” she persists. “We should probably stop.” 

“But...?” he guesses. 

“Maybe after this time,” she says. “Last hurrah.”

_____

“You have a thing with Sharon,” he says dramatically, “Don’t you?” 

“Of course not,” she answers quickly. 

“You want something with Sharon,” he amends, and knows that he’s guessed right this time around. “And are close to having a thing with her.” 

Maria glares at him over the stack of papers that Coulson left her with. “No closer than Barnes and Stark are with you.” 

Steve pauses, and then blinks. “What?” 

She sighs. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

”Wait, go back to the part where you said that Buck and Tony want something with me?” Steve asks. 

“They’re flirting and trying to date you,” Maria explains slowly, like she’s talking to a child, which is probably fair, “And you flirt back jokingly, or you don’t even acknowledge it, because you’re not even aware that they’re trying.”

He puts his thoughts (currently running faster than how Tony speaks) on hold and says instead, “I’m guessing Sharon always flirts back, but thinks that you’re joking instead.” 

“That’s what I just said.”

Steve pretends to pout. “I’m slow, okay?” 

“I know.” 

“What if you just asked her out, though.” 

“Barnes and Stark have asked you out plenty of times and you’ve never noticed,” is all Maria says, and his paused thoughts start running again. 

Why would they want him? He’s... broken.

_____ 

“No more dirty secrets,” she says wryly. Not that either of them are a _dirty_ secret to the other. Even if they are a secret. “Next time I see you, it’ll be normal. Hopefully.”

“Next time I see you,” he says, “I better see Sharon too.” 

“Threatening me?” Maria asks, raising and eyebrow. 

“I’ll tell her,” he says. 

“Go for it,” Maria says in exasperation, and then he laughs at her, before turning around and leaving. Part of him doesn’t want to leave her, or the way that Maria cuts through his bullshit and lets him forget everything (the same way he does for her), but part of him knows he has to. Because a reprieve is always only a reprieve: if it lasts too long then it starts to break and they’re back at square one. 

Tomorrow, he knows, they’ll be back to normal. Tomorrow, he’ll be back to being more than just Steve Rogers, and she’ll be back to being more than just Maria Hill. Tomorrow, they’ve got reality crashing back in like a cold slap to the face. 

He doesn’t like leaving, ever, especially when this is the last time. But he has to.

If he wants to fix what’s broken, he has to start figuring out the cracks.

_____

“His trackers all say that he’s coming back,” Tony says. 

“When?” Natasha asks.

“In five minutes.” 

_____ 

“Hi,” Steve says, duffel bag in his left hand and four sets of electronic bugs in the right. “These things stick out, by the way.” 

“Wha—” Tony sputters, taking them as well, “How the—no they don’t!”

“You’re distracting him,” Bucky says, knowing his best friend’s motives. “Where’d you go?” 

“D.C.” Steve says bluntly, like he has neither any secrets to hide nor any illusions that the trackers hadn’t been checked. “Got my head on straight.” He grins.

Except, no, he doesn’t. Bucky doesn’t know how he hasn’t realized it before, but that smile is _fake_. Faker than his smiles during the war, whenever he had to smile for the cameras and shoot the propaganda reels. The team and him have gotten that smile a million times before Amora, and now, after all the bright sunny smiles that they’ve really received from Steve from the last two weeks, he can tell it’s just not real. At all. 

It may or may not sink his heart. That Steve’s been faking a smile this entire time, for _years_ , that Steve even felt like he had to pretend to be okay, that Steve hasn’t really smiled of his own free will in a while. And he still isn’t remotely close to fine.

“Aunt Peggy doing fine?” Tony asks, falling for it. Bucky doesn’t blame him. After all, with the decades of time he’s known Steve, he shouldn’t have fell for it _at_ _all._ And guess what he did. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Steve merely says, dropping his duffel and heading elsewhere. 

Tony gapes at Steve’s retreating figure. “What the hell?”

_____

Steve spends two hours pushing himself at the gym. At the end of it, he thinks that Maria was probably the best illusion he ever had about taking a break. And then he tries to forget about it all. No use thinking about it when they’ve said their goodbyes.

Then he spends another hour running around the Compound’s perimeter. At the end of that, he decides to call a number he should have called a long while ago. 

_____

“Hello, um, can I talk to either a Dr. Nielsen or a Mr. VanCarren?” 

“James VanCarren speaking, how can I help?” 

“I don’t know. Um, my name is Steve Rogers and I think that—.” 

“You do have a standing trial appointment with Dr. Nielsen, yes, that you can schedule anytime. Technically free of charge.”

”If one of my friends... persuaded you guys—” 

“Not in the way that I think you’re imagining.” 

“Oh?” 

“Captain Rogers, this phone call has been a note on my desk since a week before SHIELD fell, from a mutual friend.” 

_____

Steve wakes up. Steve breathes in, and out. Steve tries. Steve eats. Steve punches bags. Steve draws. Steve survives. Steve does not live. Steve sleeps. Steve does not sleep. Steve wakes up.

_____ 

Natasha picks up a familiar card that’s fallen outside Steve’s room. It’s a simple business card, light lilac stock and cream-coloured ink that says all that it needs to. She doesn’t bother reading it, because she already knows what’s on this card. She also knows that she and Sam had been the ones to give Steve card a long while back. 

In fact, it’s been more than a year, which means this card has no business resurfacing like this unless Steve purposefully sought it out. And if he sought it out... Natasha wonders if she should be worried for him, or pleased. Either he's finally realized that he should talk to someone, or something made him. 

Her money’s on Amora. Steve hasn’t been the same since Amora, since his amnesia, since regaining the past few years and losing the past two weeks. 

_____ 

Wanda is the only one to notice that Steve has left and has come back. Everyone else believes that he is in his room, trying to deal with everything, but she knows better. 

Well. She knows enough to knock on his door fifty minutes after she knows he’s probably sitting down and trying to cope. This she can help with. She makes sure to knock in a specific pattern so he knows it is her and not anyone else.

“Wanda?” Steve asks, his voice a little tired and sad. 

“May I come in?” she asks. “It is only me.” 

She hears an exhaling sigh before Steve says, “Yeah.”

Wanda closes the door behind her and then notes the way Steve is sitting on his sofa, his arm resting on the armrest and propping his face up while obscuring part of it. He’s fully leaning in that armrest too, sitting slanted. He is... slouching. 

“Is there anything wrong?” he asks, looking at her with a wane smile that tells her that he knows she didn’t come to ask for anything. 

“I don’t know,” she says, an unexpected answer for him. “I wanted to find out.” 

He stares at her for a minute in unrelenting stubbornness, and yet before she says something else, he seemingly sees something that makes him say, “You know.”

“You have talked to someone,” Wanda says, “With qualifications to help. But now I can tell that you feel... different.” 

He smiles bitterly this time. “You can say that I look like I’ve cried and that I feel like shit. Because I have. Cried, that is. I know.”

“I... okay. I did not wish to pry, but I wanted to know if it was alright.”

Steve absentmindedly nods at that, his mind suddenly drifting off elsewhere. “It might be.”

She gives him a look of disbelief.

“It might not be,” he amends. “I don’t know. You should know that by now.” 

_____

“He called Mad—um, Dr. Nielsen?” 

“According to Wanda, he’s already been there once. Cried.” 

“Steve? Crying? Damn.” 

“He cried when he saw Bucky, apparently, for the second first time.” 

“Natasha, that was during Amora.” 

“Still.” 

“I bet you he’d cry if he was drunk. It’s not the same.” 

“Stop bursting my bubble, Sam.” 

“Why are you like this?”

_____

He stares at the ceiling all night. When morning rolls around, he forces himself to get up and at the very least, go through the motions. He can’t keep breaking down in his bed and wallow in pity. He has to live. 

_____

Sometimes, they’re glad that the gym’s windows are all clear. In moments like these, when Steve is punching bag after bag without his hands wrapped, they’re afforded a front-row show to it. He’s going after them with a harsh brutality that is worrying.

At this point, Bucky’s watching to make sure his best friend doesn’t suddenly collapse or hurt himself too much. Well, more than he already is. Steve’s hands are bloody and there’s skin peeling and ruined everywhere around his knuckles, pink and red and white blending without distinction in boundaries. He wants to step in, in fact, he’s been trying to step in, but no one is letting him try to talk Steve down from wrecking himself.

Apparently they want Steve to let it all out. But Bucky knows better; he knows that Steve will never let it all out because whenever he’s in his head, there’s no mental limit to how far he can go. There’s only a physical limit, and Bucky doesn’t want to stick around to find out what it is. 

“FRIDAY," is all he has to ask, and she opens the doors for him just like that. Just like that.

"Steve!" he yells a few times, and when Steve is so out of it that he doesn't even pay attention, Bucky uses his metal arm to catch Steve's next punch. In the second that Steve pauses, Bucky takes off the punching bag from where it's hanging and slides it to the other side of the room. "Steve," Bucky whispers gently.

Uncertain blue eyes flick up towards him from the floor, still too far out of it for Bucky's liking. He has a sinking feeling that Steve isn't even aware of reality right now. a feeling that's confirmed by Steve easily breaking out of his hold and tensing up for a physical fight. 

"Steve," Bucky says one more time, not wanting to fight his best friend right now, before he's on the ground. And then he says fuck it, because Steve doesn't play fair when in control of his mind or far out of it. Maybe he'll work something loose. 

What feels like an eternity later, Steve's ass is flat out on the ground, his eyes staring right into Bucky's, and a flicker of recognition rings on his face. A shudder visibly racks through him, rippling with energy. And—

"Bucky," Steve whispers, and then he goes completely slack under Bucky's hold, fully trusting. After that, he doesn't say anything, not even about the blood that they're both now covered in.

_____

"I'm sorry," Steve says after, the smile not meeting his eyes. 

"Steve..." Bucky sighs.

He shakes his head, cutting Bucky off before he could start. "I'm going out for a day or two," Steve says instead.

"Where?" 

Steve shrugs. "Do you think Tony would be willing to lend me a tracker?"

"He's offended, you know," Bucky says, rolling with the subject change. "I don't know."

Steve huffs a laugh. "You know, I don't think I ever actually got rid of the one in my shield."

_____

"Where is Steve?" Pietro asks, noticing an absence during movie night. 

"Currently in D.C.," FRIDAY says. "With Maria Hill and Sharon Carter."

"What's he doing them with them?" Tony asks, suspicious already. 

"Captain Rogers has made it known that if anyone asks his whereabouts for the next few hours, he wishes for me to inform you that he is currently doing a line of shots."

" _Where_ is he?" Bucky flatly asks, unimpressed by the elaborate lie. Steve must think he’s _so_ funny.

"At an apartment building near DuPont." 

_____

Steve comes back late the next, next night. He would have come in the afternoon, but he wasn't about shirk Dr. Nielsen. Not when he made a promise to himself. Not when he has to get _bette_ _r_ and fix his cracks. He has to.

_____

"Steve,” Sam says, and Steve looks up from his sketchpad (he had been drawing Mr. VanCarren, Dr. Nielsen’s secretary) to see that’s he’s surrounded by the team completely. This an ambush. “This is an intervention.” 

He sighs and closes his pad dutifully, and prepares himself for whatever they’re about to tell him. 

“What for?” Steve asks, because interventions are for people who are doing worse, and for people who refuse to get help. He’s not... he isn’t doing worse, right? He can’t be. He’s doing better. He thinks he’s doing better. Is he really not? 

“You keep _disappearing_ on us without even giving reasons why,” Tony answers, talking like he has to explain this to a child. Steve feels affronted. 

“I don’t have to,” Steve defends, “Besides, Tash does it all the time.” 

“ _Tash_ can take care of herself,” Natasha says, glaring at the nickname, which good. He knows just who set this intervention up. “ _Tash_ had perfectly good reasons for disappearing, all which are secrets because of a need-to-know basis.” 

He pulls a face. “Maybe where I go is a need-to-know basis. Where only I need to know. And I resent the implication that I can’t take care of myself.” 

“Name the last time you took care of yourself, Steve,” Sam points out. 

“Yesterday,” Steve responds petulantly, because it’s technically true. 

“Name the last time you actually laughed at something, Stevie,” Bucky says, strolling into the living room with a purple card in his hand that Steve recognizes all too well. He throws it at Steve’s face, and he catches it. 

“Yesterday,” Steve repeats, a little slower. And then he grins, fake as his entire existence. “At a street performance.” He pauses, losing the grin. “And I really don’t know what you guys are so worried about, but I can tell you that if it’s about me, you’re worrying for nothing.” 

“Steve...” Bucky starts to say, almost worriedly. 

“Don’t—” 

“I had to stop you from breaking your hands against a punching dummy! And then you left, but now you’re back acting like nothing’s wrong?” Bucky asks, his voice angry. 

Steve has to bite back the next few irrationally angry thoughts that spring to his mind. He glares while he’s trying to think of something to say. 

“Oh my god,” he says instead in poorly concealed exasperation. “If I have to announce every time that I just want to get fucking laid like a normal human being because all of you won’t believe me, I’m going to die of mortification like a damned teenager.” He almost trips over his own two feet trying to walk out. 

_____

Natasha corners him in the hallway. “You think you’re getting off this easy?” 

“I hoped so,” Steve frowns, finding that she’s backed him up into a wall sometime in the second that he paused for her. He can easily escape, obviously, but he thinks he’ll hear her out before he tries to get out. 

“Hope is for children,” she says. And then, changing the topic completely, she says, “You should let me set you up now.” 

“What,” he says, narrowing his eyes a little, “Isn’t love for children?” 

“You think you’re _so_ clever, Rogers.”

He forces himself to meet her eyes dead on, looking straight at her when he says, “I’m in no state to be in a relationship, isn’t that what your intervention was trying to fix?” 

“Then why don’t you _try_?” she asks, in a way that’s supposed to hurt him where it should the most. He knows that this is her way of expressing curiosity.

“You think I’m not?” Steve responds evenly. “You think that I haven’t grown _sick_ of hating myself whenever it gets bad? You think it doesn’t make my skin _crawl_  when I think about how I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing anymore?” He can’t help it when his voice rises. Natasha doesn’t flinch; she never does. 

Her voice is dominating all the same. “Then talk to us. Don’t shut everyone out like you’re the only one in the world that can hold your burdens.” 

“Oh,” he says, “Like everyone else does.”

”You,” she forcefully punches out, “Are not like everyone else, do you _understand_?”

Steve flinches, but Natasha continues with a lethal edge in her voice, “You were this close to killing yourself, and you were even closer to breaking yourself. Maybe you still are. But no one sees you anymore to even make a guess. Everyone on this team has their low points and their high points, but they don’t have your tendency to keep every single card close to their chest, or they can’t. And all of us are the better for it. What about you?” 

“I am talking! And trying,” he adds on. 

She glares. “You’re apparently only fucking your way through it.” 

“What, you’re going to say something about it?” Steve raises an eyebrow. 

“No therapist would advise their patient to try and cope by themselves. And you, you absolute idiot, need to listen to her.” 

“I think I’m hearing judgement in your voice,” Steve says, trying to deflect. 

Natasha shakes her head. “The only way to get you to do something is to compulse you.” 

“So glad you have me figured out,” he says. 

“You’re the only one I don’t have figured out. But I know two people who do,” she merely reveals, and then walks away like their conversation never happened. 

_____ 

“I’m worried about him.” 

“Unhealthy coping mechanisms, I know.” 

“Man, that’s the least of my concerns about him right now.” 

“Then?” 

“You can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed Steve distancing himself from Tony and Bucky.” 

“Hmm.” 

“Did I actually spot something before you? Huh. Not bad.” 

“Shut up, Sam.”

_____ 

Steve wakes up. He sees both Bucky and Tony standing in front of him, arms crossed. Steve goes back to sleep, groaning at the hallucinations. Maybe he does need sleep.

_____ 

Bucky blinks as Steve doesn’t even bat an eye and then goes back to sleep. “Huh,” he says. 

“Maybe he didn’t see us,” Tony says. 

Steve opens his eyes again to stare at both of them. “So I’m not hallucinating,” he dryly says, voice weary with sleep. “What the fuck are you two doing here?” 

“Nat sent us,” Tony explains, glancing at Bucky.

“Now?” Steve asks, rubbing his eyes and springing out of bed. Apparently it’s _extremely_ common for Steve to only sleep in boxers, as Bucky can clearly see. “Why? Something happen?” 

“No,” Tony says before Steve can snap out of whatever relaxed mood he happens to be in right now and into his Captain Tense Ass™️ mood. “She said that we needed to talk.” 

Steve freezes in place, and Bucky wonders if Nat’s already talked to Steve about the mysterious reason she forced them up (with the help of FRIDAY). Bucky wonders if Steve already knows. 

“I—” Steve begins to say, before he freezes again. “Yeah.” He rubs his face, in hesitation and mild annoyance. “Uh. Goddamn it, Tasha. Um. Give me a minute?” 

_____

A minute lasts nine hours. 

_____ 

“Talk to them,” Natasha hisses. 

“Jeez,” Steve says innocently. 

“Try harder,” Natasha says in warning. 

“You know, this can be considered as consent under duress.” 

She glares at him. “Rogers.” 

“And really, I’m a traumatized war veteran with shit to figure out. It’s rude to threaten a—” 

“ _Rogers_.”

_____ 

It is instantly clear to Steve that Tony and Bucky have no clue what’s happening. If Steve’s honest, he doesn’t either. He just knows that somehow, Natasha knows exactly what Dr. Nielsen is telling him, and what he’s supposed to do. Great. 

“If it helps,” Tony _unhelpfully_ says, “I don’t know what’s happening.” 

Steve glares at Tony while he tries to figure out what to say. It’s completely unhelpful that every single unrelated conversation he’s ever had with every single other person goes through his mind. And then, when he hits a certain conversation, he knows exactly what to say to escape. 

“I’m taking a break from being Cap,” Steve says. Silence. “Temporarily.” Still silence. So he sighs. “Because apparently I’m liable to put myself or others at severe risk if I’m not thinking straight.” 

_____

“He’s what? I swear to god Barnes, if you’re trying to give me a—” 

“I’m not. Says he’s taking a break.” 

“You believe that?” 

“I don’t know what to believe right now about him.” 

“You, me, and everyone else.” 

“I want to know what pushed him. Tash says that she didn’t do anything to make him. You didn’t. I didn’t, Tony didn’t, Wanda didn’t. No one here did.” 

“I think that we’re thinking this too much. Whatever made Steve realize he had to talk to someone... maybe it was a delayed reaction after Amora. Or it could be something as simple as a chance remark that stayed with him. All of us should probably focus on helping, maybe.” 

“I don’t know. Steve seems to think he can do this by himself. You can’t fix yourself. Even I know that.” 

“You’re preaching to a choir, Barnes.” 

_____ 

When Steve walks into the communal dining room, only about an hour and forty-seven minutes later even though no one here is counting, he freezes. Tony looks around him, and then thinks that Steve’s reaction is probably valid considering the mess all of them are in. 

“Noooooooooo!” Clint is groaning in the background, probably because he’s landed in some kind of a Monopoly trap that Pepper’s set up again. Honestly, Tony sympathizes with that too. Why else do you think he decided he wanted to be on Pepper’s team? He has a heart condition; he can’t handle losing drastically. 

In the meanwhile, he can hear Bucky and Natasha (also a team) scheming on how to swindle the bank without anyone noticing. Bruce hands Pepper the money that him and Clint (another team) owe. Wanda and Pietro (team) are arguing about something in some language that Tony’s given up on placing, since they seem to know every single Slavic language out there. He thinks they’re probably fighting about the ethics of using Wanda’s powers to load the dice. Sam and Rhodey (team) have long given up on protesting all the cheaters, and somehow have the hold of both Boardwalk and Park Place, and now they’re arguing about hotel placement.  Vision and Thor (team) are... talking about an Asgardian version of Monopoly that involves actual brawls and bloodshed as part of the rules. 

Yeah, Game Night at the Compound is always extreme, when everyone is dramatically focused on winning. So much that they don’t notice that Steve is even here right now, staring at the game with a blank look on his face. 

Tony is probably the only one who notices, because he doesn’t have to pay attention Monopoly when he has _Pepper._  He thanks his lucky stars that he hasn’t been swept up in the game, because then he would have never seen it. 

When Steve unfreezes, he softly smiles at the scene, fond of all of them, and then shakes his head, all the tension lost from his posture. Steve walks away, disappearing as quick as he came, but the smile he just had doesn’t fade from Tony’s memory for the rest of the game. 

Where has that tender smile been all this time? 

_____

God, sometimes Steve can’t help but smile at what a group of wonderful idiots he has. It’s just that he’s way too tired to even consider staying any longer; too late.

_____

The inevitable happens. The Avengers get called out to a battle. And Steve?

Steve watches the battle as he nervously paces, catching every single missed opportunity and mistake that usually he takes care of. His skin starts to crawl again, feeling helpless. 

And then he watches Iron Man go down in the middle of the screen, and the fight’s nowhere near done. 

Steve very carefully does not lose it. 

_____ 

Tony falls. Wanda catches him with her magic, but lets go of the aliens she had been fighting just decides prior. And then: chaos. Everyone wants to rush over to Tony to see what the hell happened, but the aliens are making it impossible for anyone to try and move, according to their frustrations. The comms are going wild and they’re losing since Wanda’s out trying to bring Tony out. She feels incredibly bad about it, but the armor won’t open to her wishes and she thinks that Tony has already lost consciousness. Her magic tells her that he’s alive, thank god. And then—

“Silver!” Steve’s voice rings through all their ears, “I’ve got the last of the civilians. Bring Tony outside the perimeter. There’s an ambulance waiting. Scarlet, three o’clock!” 

She feels a blur take Tony from her and then immediately attacks her right side with her magic. Wanda smiles as she pours her anger at the alien who made Tony fall. This feels a little good. She wonders how Steve is doing. And she wonders why he’s here when he’s supposed to be taking a break. Oh god. This _isn’t_ good. 

_____

For once, Steve likes that the police have made themselves completely useful by setting up a perimeter for them and preventing anyone from getting hurt. He likes that the police have decided to cooperate with Pietro running in and out trying to save civilians from getting hurt. This makes everything so much easier. 

As soon as he commands Pietro to bring Tony back to the ambulance at said perimeter, he sees a silver blur do just so. 

Steve solemnly walks over to Tony, where the armor still won’t let open. “FRIDAY,” he whispers, noticing the swirl of red around the armor, “Wanda’s magic has him. She’s got him breathing; you can open up the armor.” 

The armor slowly unfolds, and medics immediately pull Tony’s body into a stretcher that disappears into the ambulance. Steve doesn’t make any sort of a request to follow in. 

He has a battle to end. 

_____ 

“Alright,” Steve says, because Steve has apparently forgotten what it means to take a goddamn break. He had them all fooled for a good second, too, that he was done. “I’ve got eyes on all of you. War Machine, Falcon, I want you matching your attacks with Scarlet so you don’t spend the rest of this trying to dodge her as well. Scarlet, watch your nine. Widow, incoming at your six. Hawkeye, switch over to your blinding arrows and give Hulk a distraction.” 

Bucky scowls and tries to find Steve among the mess. Then a familiar shield flies right above his head. “You’re supposed to be on a break, bastard! What the hell are you doing?” 

Steve ignores him. “Thor! Stop playing whack-a-mole with the aliens!” 

“My apologies, Captain. ’Tis a fun game,” Thor cheekily says as uses his lightening to zap the rest of the aliens down. Just like that. _Just_ _like_ _that_. Why is Bucky here again? “Is this to your satisfaction?” 

“You couldn’t have done that three hours ago?” Bucky asks, staring at the literal god on his team that puts everyone to shame. 

“It was not the right time,” Thor merely says.

_____ 

Bucky doesn’t say a single thing to him the entire time that Steve’s trying to push the limits of his motorcycle going to the hospital. Doesn’t crack a single joke about him having to wrap his arms around Steve in order to stay on the motorcycle. Doesn’t do a single damned thing but breathe and Steve's not entirely sure Bucky’s doing that either. 

When they reach the hospital, Steve groans as he sees an entirely full parking lot and paparazzi right behind him. And someone’s saying that emergency patients can only have one person with them at a time. Really? Now? He swallows hard, making a split second decision, and stops right in front of the entrance for Bucky to get off. Between him and Bucky, his best friend has the right to be right there for Tony first. Especially when only one of them can go in. 

“Go,” Steve says, giving Bucky a look when Bucky looks murderous at the paparazzi. “They can’t come inside. Tell me how he is, okay?” Bucky nods and vanishes inside, his expression starting to show signs of anxiousness and panic.

Just a minute later, when Steve’s still at the entrance of the hospital and there are cameras flashing in his face, the rest of the Avengers arrive. He takes one look at everyone, _everyone_ , and promptly drives out. 

He very carefully does not lose it. 

_____ 

“Where is Steve?” Tony asks on the eighth day that he’s been awake. Or so they tell him; he really can’t remember the first day that they tell him he was conscious. 

Bucky’s face darkens in a way that Tony doesn’t like. He looks out the door, and then back to Tony with a frown and a carefully calculated shrug. 

“How many bags did he ruin?” Tony asks instead, taking Bucky’s silence as a confirmation that Steve’s holed himself up at the Compound.

“Zero,” Bucky finally says, looking down in thought, in concern. “At least, zero that we know of.” He sighs, and Tony knows he can’t brace himself for what’s coming. “Natasha’s trying to find him.” 

“What is this? Disappearing act number eleven?” Tony asks as he tries to shake his head. 

_____ 

“Any luck?” 

“Not really.” 

“You want to go see Tony while I give it a shot?” 

“Tony’s liable to earn the idiot speech from me if I go right now.” 

“Don’t hurt my boyfriend.” 

“He’s your _boyfriend_ now, Barnes?” 

“What does that even mean, Nat?” 

“Absolutely nothing.”

_____ 

It means everything. Bucky doesn’t call Tony his boyfriend unless he’s making a joke or, as Natasha has noticed, he whenever Steve’s around to make Steve roll his eyes. Otherwise, it’s adorable, sappy nicknames and ‘lover’ and ‘partner’ because they’re both apparently too old to have a boyfriend. 

This falls under neither of the categories.

_____

When Tony wakes up, he sees Steve leaning against the wall, staring at his shoes.

“You’re supposed to be missing,” Tony says. “For the millionth time.” 

“You’re supposed to be resting and taking it easy,” Steve counters, the words on the tip of his tongue with how fast he said them. 

When Tony looks around his hospital bed, he realizes that his tablet and his phone are both missing, probably removed by Steve. Tony glares at Steve, or at least tries to. The glare bounces off of Steve, ineffective. 

“Hey,” Tony protests. “As if you’re any better.” 

“I heal,” Steve says, which is completely bullshit because there are some things the serum never fixes, the true wounds that keep Steve up and everyone knows it. “And I don’t have a heart condition, but I’m going to develop one if everyone around me keeps falling like it’s in their middle name.”

“Are you yelling at me, or...?” Tony asks, wincing a little at the mention of people falling.

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not yelling at you. I can’t do that anymore, now that I know why I used to—nevermind. Just. Please. Please, don’t ever do that again. Everyone seems to be keen on telling me this, but you should know that you... you have us. Please don’t leave.” 

Ironically, before Tony can say anything, something flashes in Steve’s face, and he recoils instantly. Within a second, he leaves and the door softly closes behind him. Tony’s alone again, and without anything to do. Fantastic. 

_____

Steve sits on the couch for the first time in little over a week, staring at the coffee table in front of him. It’s new. He wonders what happens to the old one, and then sees a hint of a scorch mark on the rug. Maybe Thor again, or maybe Wanda. 

He’s punched out almost all his feelings, and whatever didn’t leave got fucked out. He feels empty and cold, unbearably cold, but it’s just a little preferably over wanting to feel anything right now. It’s easier, to pretend like nothing’s wrong right now and that he hadn’t fucked everything up. 

Running away from everything is something everyone says he doesn’t ever do, but recently he feels like that’s all he’s ever been doing. He’s been running long enough that he’s forgotten how to breathe. But breathing means pausing and thinking and he just can’t deal with that. 

Honestly, Steve can’t deal with anything right now. And he’s all the better for it in this moment. Right?

_____ 

She finds him staring nowhere as he sits on the sofa, blank as a slate. 

“Get up,” She brusquely orders him, and he jolts back like he was violent pulled from his mind, shocked like electricity coursing through his veins. Natasha has a feeling he hadn’t heard exactly what she had said, so she repeats herself, louder and sharper. 

Steve looks at her, but it takes a minute for his eyes to focus from their clouded haze and really _see_ her. She waits, but he eventually stands. As soon as he does, it seems that Steve’s fully shaken it off, as his face hardens and settles into his Captain mode. Or, he’s hiding it well. 

“What’s happened?” Steve asks softly, his voice at odds with how he’s positioned. 

“I should be asking that,” she responds, just a little unkindly. 

Steve stares at her, deciding something in his mind as he paused to answer her, and then slumps back down onto the sofa. He scoffs, trying to deny it, and finds that his attempt was pathetic. He simply looks down after that, still thinking on what to say so he sounds believable in whatever attempt he’s going to make to bullshit her.

“If you even try to bullshit me, I will break every bone in your body,” she threatens, knowing that at least that would keep him benched for a while. And knowing the stubborn idiot, he’s find a way. 

Steve’s head lifts back up and he looks at her again. He doesn’t say anything, lost in memories, nightmares and words. Natasha decides to sit down on the soft chair in front of him. She might be here for a while. 

“He fell,” Steve finally says after ten minutes, sounding devastated and... scared.

_____ 

“Survivor’s guilt?” 

“Survivor’s guilt.” 

“Goddamn. Good ol’ emotional repression?” 

“That seems to be a given now, anyway.” 

“God, sometimes I hate the 1940s.” 

“Sometimes?” 

“More than I already do, man. Only good thing to come out of that was Steve.” 

“Not James?” 

“Of course not... Nat. Huh. Not Nat. Not Nat. Not Nat. That’s a mouthful.” 

“Child.”

_____ 

When Tony’s deemed healthy enough to be released, he’s under strict orders to take it easy for the week or so. Normally, both Steve and Bucky double up on Tony to make sure that Tony doesn’t do something like not taking it easy. This time around, it’s only Bucky trying to keep Tony out of his labs and away from any machinery. 

Why? Because Steve’s trying his damnedest best to keep his distance from both Tony and Bucky. 

“Alright,” Sam sighs when he catches Steve suddenly catch his punching bag and stop it from swinging. Steve’s face looks like he’s been caught with his hand down a cookie jar, which is the face he seems to be adopting every single time he walks into a room where one of the two are there, causing Steve to backtrack out. In this case, he’s doing the slightly less childish version of fleeing, thanks to having a head start because of his super-hearing. 

“Steve,” Sam calls out when both of them are out of the gym (and Bucky and Natasha are both in the gym) and alone. “Steve!” 

“What?” Steve asks when he pauses and turns around. 

“I mean this in the best possible way, but you’re being a dumbass. An emotionally stunted dumbass,” Sam blurts out, hoping he doesn’t sound unkind. 

“Thanks,” Steve dryly says, and then he walks away without another word. Sam throws his hands up into the air, miffed. 

_____ 

Bucky would really like to talk to his best friend one of these days. He would also like to at least see his best friend one of these days, and not just in a passing glance. 

_____

“You think you’re doing this for them,” Wanda says to Steve when she catches him sitting and staring out the window. “Do it for yourself.” 

He sharply turns towards her and glares. At least she can say she tried when Natasha comes around and asks her. And at least her message was cryptic enough that anyone who could have listened in would take it one way, when she and Steve know what she has actually meant.

_____

“Sit your ass down,” Tony all but yells at Steve when Steve tries to back away. He can’t help it; Steve internally groans and glares. “I swear to god, Rogers. Sit. Your. Ass. Down.” 

Steve turns around and does no such thing. He leans against the doorway instead, still staring at Tony and Bucky. There is nothing he can say, so he remains silent. Silent, and assessing. 

“If you even make a single attempt to leave, I will have JARVIS keep you on this floor until you fucking stay and listen,” Tony threatens, his glare matching Steve, but with actual fire and exasperation behind it. 

Steve just stares at Tony, making a big show of standing right where he is. He can’t bring himself to glare the same at Bucky, whose glare with strip him down to the cowardly bastard he is right there and then. 

“You feel guilty,” Bucky says, because he doesn’t even need to look at Steve to break him down. _Great_ , Steve bitterly thinks, _just_ _great_. How had he forgotten that? Maybe because he was too used to getting away with pretending. 

“Okay, no, this isn’t going to work if you pull the crazy psychic telepathy thing and tell him what’s wrong,” Tony says to Bucky with a roll of his eyes. He turns to Steve. “Because you’re avoiding us. Terribly. Which is sad because I know you can at least be a little stealthier than right now.”

“What do you want me to say?” Steve asks flatly, void of any emotion or tone. Better to feel nothing than to pretend something else right now. “Guilt’s not the word I’d use right about now.” 

“Then what is?” Bucky looks one wrong word away from snapping. Good. Let them both be angry at him. 

“I don’t know,” Steve responds. “Maybe it was guilt, and maybe it will be guilt, but not right now.” 

“Then you gotta talk to us,” Bucky says, “Because this thing where you keep running away isn’t working. Let us, or _someone_ in.” 

“It’s the one thing I’m good at anymore,” Steve bitterly smiles, dropping his gaze down. “Well, that and fighting, apparently.” 

“Is that what this is about?” Tony asks quietly, sounding like he’s discovered something about Steve. Whatever it is, it’s definitely not real, especially if Tony’s voice has gotten softer, and kinder. Steve’s truths don’t deserve a _softness_.

They don’t. He doesn’t fucking deserve any of them, or any of this. Steve huffs a laugh, cold and bitter as the bile creeping up his throat. He hates himself for what he’s going to say next, but god, he’s tried to make it work and he can’t anymore. It will never work, and he’s got to end it before they even try. Steve’s had his attempts crash on him, and any hopes crushed. Best not to let them get their hopes up any more than they already have. 

They don’t deserve that.

“No, it’s not,” he answers, “I’ve figured out a lot after the battle, and _this_ has been something that‘s staring me in the face for a long while, even if I chose to ignore it.  _This_ is about the past months, about the past goddamned year, almost.”

He pauses, shaking his head slightly as he lifts his glare back up to both of them this time. Looking them right in the eyes, as best as he can, he says, “If you think I’m oblivious to everything around me, every single conversation around me, you’re dead wrong.” Steve pauses again, because that’s not the point he’s trying to make. 

He sees both Bucky and Tony blink at the change in conversation. Well, he has their attention.

“You two are my closest friends, best friends, really. But—” Steve closes his eyes and tries to hide any traces of the fact that he’s blatantly lying to their faces, “I’m not interested. Two and one don’t make a happy three; leave me _out_ of this. I’m not a good person to be with. I’m not g—”

 _Good for you_ , he wants to tell them. _I’m a fucking disaster who ruined your lives and you’re the ones that had to piece themselves back together. You deserve all the happiness I can’t give you, ever._ His words lodge themselves in his throat firmly, refusing to come out. So Steve turns and leaves. Tony doesn’t yell at JARVIS to let him stay. Good.

It’s easier to make people hate you than have them hate you on their own accord. It’s easier to handle, too, some people might say. But he’s never been ‘some people’.

_____

“What did you _do_ to them?” Natasha hisses at him, surprising him when he pops out of the gym showers in only a towel. She doesn’t need to specify the _them_ she’s talking about. 

“Told them what I should have a long time ago,” Steve coldly responds, brushing past her and reaching for his clothes. 

“Which is?” Natasha asks in thinly concealed fury. Steve doesn’t let himself acknowledge how bad everything is if Natasha is visibly angry. 

“That I don’t want to date them,” he truthfully responds, in an even voice. 

She looks him up and down, and tries to hide her surprise the moment she realizes that he’s telling the truth. Her anger vanishes. She stares at him for a few seconds, and dutifully turns around when he changes into his actual clothes.

“Not into guys? Or not into couples?” Natasha asks casually, when Steve tells her that she can turn around again. 

“Drop it,” he says. 

“The audio and video of your moment with Tony and Bucky are mysteriously erased from all logs,” she offers instead. 

“And?” Steve impatiently asks. 

“They said that you all but said you’re not gay,” she says, because of course she had gotten the information out of them first. Of course she already knew what was happening and wanted it confirmed. Except for the fact that Steve hadn’t mentioned anything about not liking guys or his sexuality, period. Or even hinting towards it. All he had said was that he wasn’t interested in dating them. Did they take that as something else? Or is Natasha completely bullshitting him right now?

He waits for Natasha to continue. 

“And I thought,” she says like she happened to be a college student relaying gossip to a friend, “That’s strange. You’re not one for implications and subtleties if you can come out and say something. So what’s up?” 

“Nothing,” he says. “Everyone jumping to conclusions. I don’t want to date them. End of story.” 

“Is it?” 

“Drop it,” he says in warning. 

“That implies there is something,” she says. 

“Yeah,” Steve glares. “And that something is the fact that I don’t want to date them; is that such a crime?” 

_____ 

“You’re an idiot,” Wanda says when she sees him next. She will keep his secret, for the time being, but the fact that he is an idiot still remains. “An actual idiot.” 

“No,” he says defensively, “I’m not.” 

The worst part is that she can easily believe why he thinks that. 

_____

He stares at the lilac card that’s resurfaced on his dresser sometime in the last few hours that he was out of his room. Steve throws it away in his wastebin, unable to look at it. And, of course, it mocks him from there as well. Mocks him about his failure to be anything that a mess.

Steve glares at it back, and then throws away an empty bottle of Coke that he somehow still has despite being meticulously neat about everything. He doesn’t even drink Coke out of cans. But Clint does.

He sighs and makes a promise to himself to do something about the vents that lead into his room.

_____ 

“How was retirement?” Steve dryly asks Clint when he finds Clint in the communal living room. 

“Lovely as always,” Clint grins, before faking a gag. “And that’s all the grownup, pretentious conversation I can do.” 

Steve snorts. “You’re back. Missed us?” 

“Definitely missed the drama,” Clint responds with a knowing smirk. “In both senses of the word.” 

“Nah,” Steve shrugs. “I don’t think you did.” He walks away. 

_____ 

A week passes. The tension between Steve and Tony and Bucky is thick and fragile enough to break with even a slight breath. Tony and Bucky try to pretend like everything is fine, and Steve shutters into himself more.

It goes without saying that Steve’s spiraling more since the battle.  

_____

Wanda tosses and turns in her sleep, plagued with nightmares that aren’t even her own. She can’t handle them right now, not when her mind has darkened, and right when she gets up to confront the nightmares’ owner, they stop. In their place comes a new form of a headache: loudly projected mental pain. 

She follows it all the way to the kitchen, where Steve’s hunched over a kettle, making tea like a zombie would. Or a ghost. Though that’s not fair to ghosts and zombies, as they have more life than Steve does right now. 

“Steve,” she gently calls out. “Whatever you’re seeing right now, it’s not real.” 

There’s no response from him. She doesn’t even think he’s heard her. 

“Steve,” she repeats, finding her patience wearing thin from her own nightmares. “You have to listen to me, it is not real.” 

A shudder runs through him; proof that he has heard her this time around, at least. Maybe not her words, but her presence. 

He turns around, days of sleeplessness and devastation eked onto his face like an intimate story. It’s almost as if he’s aged within the last week without any proper rest of self-care. 

“It was,” he simply says, shaking his head as another wave of shudders run through him. “Both of them fell. They always fall. And I can’t catch them.” 

“It isn’t your fault,” she says. “It never was. You have to stop thinking that.” 

“You weren't there,” he counters, “How could you know that?” 

“You know what?” Wanda asks, rubbing her face and trying to keep her voice and temper in check. “I was. I have seen your nightmares enough times that I’m starting to think I was there. And I think I know what happened better than you do because I’m not consumed in _useless_ guilt like you are.” 

She fails just a little at calming down.

“You... what?” Steve asks, something in him responding to her words. She walks closer to him, hoping her presence will snap him out of his thoughts for just a second.

“You. Dream. Loudly.” Wanda taps her fingernail into his chest with every word, glaring at him. God, she’s fucking tired having to balance everyone’s emotions and thoughts and nightmares in her head. “And. I. Am. Fucking. Tired. Of. It.” She’s fully aware she sounds like an angry machine punching out words. 

He stares at her, speechless. “I didn’t know.” 

“Now you do,” she says a little harshly. “And I don’t care what it takes for you to accept this, but it was not your fault that Tony fell the other day. Just because you weren’t there doesn’t mean it was _your_ negligence or anything. Just because it started to go wrong because you weren’t there doesn’t mean _anything_.”  

“But—” Steve starts to protest.  

“Do you think that the rest of us are incapable of fighting without you?” Wanda snaps and asks him. This is not the right way to do this; she really shouldn’t be so rude about how she words what she’s saying. But she doesn’t care right now. “Because if you place Tony’s fall on yourself, you’re calling the rest of us incompetent. So. Let me repeat myself, because you need some sleep and I need a break. It was not your fault. Think about it like that. Think about the train and the wormhole some other time, but know that you have to let other people be other people, okay? They have choices. All of us are capable of thinking.” 

She stops before she can say something else more fiery and rubs her face again. 

“I need some tea,” she quietly says in Steve’s silence, rubbing her temples. “And alcohol, maybe.” 

_____

Steve sleeps. He doesn’t have any dreams. 

_____ 

“I may or may not have yelled at him.” 

“About?” 

“You. Well, not about what you’re thinking of.” 

“Then?” 

“I told him if he blamed himself for your fall, then he declared everyone else incompetent.” 

“I simultaneously approve of your logic and disapprove of you telling him.” 

“I was angry and sleep-deprived.” 

“I’m not blaming you. Hell, I would have said worse.” 

“You're not talking to him. How can you possibly have said worse?” 

“You know what I mean.”

_____ 

Natasha passes the hallway, and then stops when she hears two particular voices. She turns around and silently stalks into the living room, where Wanda and Steve are talking to each other, their voices low. 

“I’m sorry for yelling at you the other night,” Wanda apologizes, her back to her. Natasha can’t read her expression now, and neither can she with Steve, since Wanda and Steve are sitting side-by-side. Just great. 

“Think I needed it,” he says ruefully. “Especially if I keep on keeping you up with my nightmares.” 

“I mean,” Wanda says, “I’m not apologizing for what I said. Just how I said it.” 

Natasha hears Steve huff a laugh. “See, that sounds more like you.” 

“You're an idiot,” Wanda deadpans. Now Natasha wishes more that she could see their expressions. That’s how more than half a conversation passes. 

Steve snorts. 

“Seriously,” Wanda says, her voice a little more darker and heavy. There’s something in her voice that Natasha can’t quite figure out, but she can tell that Steve does. 

_____

“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” Sam says, finding Steve decimating a punching bag like he’s getting paid to do so. Not that Steve’s hard up on money. 

“Don’t bother,” Steve yells out in a strange, grunting kind of way. It’s strange enough that Sam wonders if Steve had said _don’t_ _bother_ , or something else he heard wrong.

“I’m not here because of that,” Sam calls out, and by _that_ he means the Bucky and Tony thing. “Steve. I’m worried for you. Everyone is. You’ve been down here for hours.”

Steve punches out the bag hard enough that it flies across the room with a particularly loud noise. He stands there, staring at the bag as his hands drop with sweat and blood because he hasn’t wrapped his hands. If the bag wasn’t concerning, the blood and the haze in his face definitely is. 

“Steve,” Sam firmly says, hard enough that Steve’s eyes snap to him on reflex, even if he still looks lost and out of it. “This isn’t working. You keep slipping back.” 

“Everyone,” Steve rasps, his voice hoarse, “keeps telling me that.” 

Steve walks towards Sam, still bloody and sweaty because he hasn’t done a single damn thing to fix that. “Not you too.” 

Sam looks at this man who he considers to be pretty high up there on the list of people that he would easily trade his life for, and he can’t stop seeing the self-harm on Steve’s hands. What good is he as a counselor, as a friend, if he can’t help Steve? But he knows he’s just a little out of his mind here, trying to help Steve. At this point, though, he thinks even the smallest progress that doesn’t slip back has to be a victory. And maybe it’s the small progress he can help with. 

“Come on,” Sam sighs, “Your hands are bloody; at least let me bandage them up.” 

“They’re always bloody,” Steve mutters, “Only now everyone can see that.” 

Sam pretends that he doesn’t hear that, and files it away for later. 

_____ 

Steve finds that his nightmares are now plagued by the usual suspects. The war, the train, the aliens, HYDRA, Ultron, Amora, and everything in between. 

When he wakes up from a particularly devastating one—by that he means that he screamed himself awake—he decides that he’s just going give sleep a shot tomorrow night. So he heads to the kitchen, or at least he had planned to. 

Piano music from a room on the communal floor stops him, and he pops in, wondering who is playing the piano at this odd hour. Steve is in no way expecting to find Pietro seated at the bench, gracefully playing a slow tune, but it doesn’t make what he sees any less real. Or any less beautiful to heart though the song seems to be on the sadder side, barely clinging on to a happy facade. 

When Pietro finishes Steve can’t help but quietly whisper, “Wow.” 

“Oh!” Pietro says as he turns around. “Hello.” 

“That was lovely. I hadn’t—” Steve starts to say, it he’s interrupted by Pietro humbly shaking his head, like it was nothing. That is something else that Steve doesn’t expect. 

“Expected me to know how to play the piano? A slow song at that?” Pietro asks, though he doesn’t sound bitter or sad about that. He sounds amused, and tired. “I know. No one does. But it is good to keep people guessing, no?” 

“I guess,” Steve responds. 

“I play whenever I cannot sleep,” Pietro says. “I have seen you in these hallways much more frequently recently.” Steve notices that the only way that Pietro could see him is if he was awake as well. Which means that Pietro has been awake and struggling to sleep a lot longer than Steve if he can make an observation like that. 

“I’ve been in these hallways much more frequently,” Steve shrugs. 

Pietro imitates his shrug with a knowing look. “I’ve heard you know how to play as well. I have music for two, if you would ever like to give it a try again.” 

Steve smiles and declines with a shake of his head. 

But before he turns around to leave, Pietro says, “You would be surprised, at what music can do that words cannot.”

_____

Steve wakes up in the middle of the night again. He hears piano music in the hallway again, now that his ears are trying to find it. Steve decides that it might not hurt. 

_____ 

“Have you checked your phone?”  

“How could I? You woke me up right now.” 

“Clint sent some very interesting photos to the team group chat.” 

“Unless it is a picture of me naked, I do not care.” 

“It is a picture of you, not naked though, thank goodness.” 

“Is it flattering?” 

“Well, it is a photo of you and Steve playing piano at night. I didn’t know you played anymore.” 

“I did not know Steve played.” 

“You should play piano with him more. He didn’t punch any bags today. And he slept.” 

“I did not do anything. And this will only last for today, believe me.”  

_____

Steve sees Wanda approach him and hunches just a little more behind his sketchbook. There’s something in her hands that he can’t quite see just yet.

“You,” she says to him, not bothering to take a seat, though now he can tell that she’s holding some kind of a book. “Are impossible. And if you’re not going to talk to anyone, at least right down everything that’s on your mind in this book. No one will read it. Sam and I have talked to professionals, even when he’s already a professional, and we’ve read countless scientific articles about this. Every single thought that’s negative? Write it down.” 

“Why would I do that?” Steve asks, staring at the book she’s all but shoved into his hands. 

“You refuse to talk to your therapist. To us. To anyone, really. But everything in your mind cannot stay up there or it becomes worse. Get it out. Write it out. It was Sam’s idea. But we’ve agreed that I’m better at making you do things at the moment.”

Before he can say anything, she walks away. 

_____

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Yes!” 

“Now I just have to make sure no one will even try to touch it.” 

_____

The book taunts him. He throws it away in the wastebin filled with ruined sketches. It mocks him. He picks it out. He stares at it. He hides it in his sock drawer. It lingers in his mind. He pulls it out of the sock drawer and leaves it on his desk. He sighs. It sits there. He glares. It glares back. He finds a pen and opens it. 

_____ 

“Hey FRIDAY?” Steve asks, staring at his filled book. “Are Bucky and Tony occupied at the moment?” 

“No,” FRIDAY responds. “They are currently in the lab. Sergeant Barnes is trying to get Sir to eat lunch.” 

Steve leaves his book where it is, trusting in Wanda’s powers and whatever she’s doing to keep his book private and for his eyes only. He gets up and heads towards the elevator. There’s a conversation or two he has to have with Tony and Bucky. The elevator ride is quick up to the lab, and the door automatically open for him. 

“You know, it’s important to eat food every once in a while,” Steve says as he walks in, keeping his tone light. “Like every few hours, unless you’re sleeping.” 

_____ 

“I meant every word,” Steve says to them without any hesitation or shame after they’re done yelling, “I’m not taking that back, but I shouldn’t have said it like that.” 

“How else do you say something like that?” Tony asks him, a tinge of bitterness and anger creeping up into his voice again. So if Steve wasn’t here to take it back, then why was he here? Was he trying to rub it in or show disgust? 

Steve sighs, and looks down, a sad smile on his face. “I know that I—I fucked up. Badly. I don’t want a relationship like that with you, either of you, both of you, whatever. Okay? But you guys are just—closer than _family_ and I don’t want to fuck that up anymore. I don’t want that to change if you don’t. I don’t want _any_ of it to change. I focused on the wrong thing when I lost my temper on you. I shouldn’t have. So. I—I don’t... I don’t know. I’m going to leave guys alone. Yeah?” 

Tony finds himself powerless to call Steve back again, only for a completely different reason that last time. He watches as Steve walks away, not at all confident in his footsteps unlike last time, and much less graceful and precise. 

_____ 

“Fucking earnest blue eyes. What the fuck did he do to get those kind of eyes?” 

“Traded his goddamned health to the devil for ’em, maybe, I don’t know.” 

“I think that’s the first time you made a joke about his health.” 

“Couldn’t afford to when the punk would get something out of nowhere.” 

“Yikes.” 

“Worse. Steve’s Ma ran herself ragged trying to keep up with his health.”  

“You did too, and everyone in the world knows it.” 

“Yeah, but _why_ is the thing no one knows about.” 

_____ 

Wanda steps into the Compound with an enthusiasm and a renewed smile that dies the second she sees Bucky standing alone in front of a bookcase. He looks like he’s searching for a book, but all she can feel is sadness and a strange blankness. And that’s it. 

“Hey,” she softly greets, careful not to startle him even though he’s known she’s here since she walked in. “There’s a good one by Osc—” Wanda trails off as she realizes what that book is really about. “His other stories. Oscar Wilde’s. Not the book. Those are nice. His short stories.” 

“Not really looking for a book,” Bucky says. “But I’ll keep it in mind.” 

“I’m sorry,” she quickly blurts out, her mind putting together pieces of what could have happened. 

He looks surprised. “What for?” 

“It’s my fault,” she says. “Whatever he said. Unless he managed to successfully apologize. I doubt it. So. I’m sorry.”

Bucky smiles almost like he’s doing it since it’s the correct response to her apology. “Don’t be,” he says dryly, clearly wanting to say something else and biting it back. “It’s not you.” 

“I—”

“He’s thick-headed and stubborn,” Bucky continues, not giving her a chance to protest, “But fully capable of making most kinds of decisions.” 

She stares at him for a second as all the pieces start to snap in place. When they do, she gives Bucky a tight smile and says, “Apparently he’s capable of more decision-making skills than advisable.” 

_____ 

“How did Queens go?” 

“Great! Vis and I met Spider-Man. Well, Spider-Man kind of flung himself towards a Vision when using his impressive synthetic spider-webs. He’s adorable.”

“Vision or Spider-Man?” 

“Spider-Man. Well, and Vis. But I meant Spider-Man. Not that... um, anyway.” 

“I’m guessing you either ran into Bucky?” 

“Help me. Natasha, come on, _help_ me.”

“I’m trying to get him to—that’s not what you meant.” 

“He turned them down again.” 

“I can’t fix that. He’s genuinely not interested.” 

“You have to be _kidding_ me.”

_____ 

“Okay,” Wanda says, surprising the shit out of Steve when she walks into the room behind him. “Time’s up.” Her footsteps angrily approach him until she stops right in front of where he’s sitting. She doesn’t look angry, though. 

“For?” Steve asks, blinking slowly. 

Wanda stares at him, unimpressed. Her eyes slowly drift to the book in his hands, which isn’t his journal but _is_ his sketch pad. And he’s currently flipped open to a quick sketch of her laughing adorably from the time that Vision tried to make snow angels, her cheeks high and eyes scrunched. Which, Steve’s noticed, is how she laughs when there’s nothing weighing her down at all, when she’s all of her barely-an-adult 22 years and nothing more. 

“Cute,” she comments to him, her lips quirked up in a temporary smile. And sure enough, when she looks back up to him, there’s no smile in sight. 

“Who sent you over this time?” Steve asks, because he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to stomach any fake conversations right now. But then he sees the quiet temper behind her expression and then asks instead, “Why?” 

“You tell me why,” Wanda retorts. Steve stares at her, blank like he doesn’t know what to say to that. And then she sighs, rubbing her face. “Don’t answer that. It’s not going to mean anything if you don’t feel like you want to tell me. I’m sorry. I’m just... Okay. Here’s what’s up.” 

“I finished the journal,” he volunteers instead. 

She perks up. “You did?” Wanda asks, surprised in a way that he thinks he should take as an insult, but is probably justified. “Do you want another one? Or do you want me to just...” She trails off as she waves her hand in demonstration. Steve thinks she’s trying to imitate her placing a privacy ward or whatever it is she did to the other one. 

“Sure.” 

“Just come find me,” she says, “Next time. But that’s not what I’m here for. Well, I _was_ but that’s out the window now. Come on.” 

“Where?” Steve looks up at her in confusion, only to find a bright smile. 

“You’re tense,” she says, and she doesn’t let him protest before she continues to say, “And something is clearly on your mind that I know about but I’m dropping. I’m tense. And something you’re never finding out about is on my mind. Let’s go fight this out. Nothing barred.” 

“Hey,” he protests, this time having the chance to. “You have powers.” 

She looks at him in disbelief. “What,” Wanda dryly says, amused, “No faith in your shield? Or your own abilities? First blood or tapout, come on.” 

_____ 

“You first.” 

“No, no, it is fine, you can go first.” 

“I think we have to let this go. Not fully, but—” 

“Yes! That is what I was going to say as well. He won’t do anything if all of us gang up on him.” 

“The small progresses, we just focus on the small things.” 

“And then hopefully, he’ll want to go see the doctor again and this time around, maybe he will talk.” 

“You know, it’s almost like you can read my mind.” 

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny, Sam.” 

_____

Three days pass by.

_____

Game night is a little strained, and Bucky feels just a little guilty when he realizes it’s mainly because of him and Tony and Steve. No one looks like they’re blaming any of them, though, so he tries not to look like what Clint would call a cliche brooding YA teen. Whatever that means. Bucky swears that Clint’s just as much of a kid as his actual kids are. 

“Since Team SI won last time,” Natasha says, “Pepper, what are we doing this time?” 

“Hey!” Tony protests, offended. “I was part of Team SI, shouldn’t I pick too?” He looks to Bucky, as if to ask for back-up, but Bucky just shrugs and gives him an innocent smile. 

“Since Pepper carries Team SI last time to win,” Natasha amends, smirking, “Pepper, what are we doing this time?” 

Tony squawks at Clint and Pietro unabashedly laughing at him. Bucky hides his own smirk and instead pats Tony consolingly, since he’s a little shit. Oops? 

“I hate all of you,” Tony declares with all the certainty of a petulant child. Then he turns to Bucky. “Even you, unless you make it better.” 

“Maybe later,” he says, still maintaining a blank face. Bucky can hear someone pretending to gag, and someone telling them to save it for later, but he ignores them all. 

_____

Steve wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping for breath. He’s cold, even though he’s surrounded by blankets and the heating still tells him that it’s around eighty degrees in his room. He’s cold in a way that external warmth won’t ever fix. Blankets can’t fix the ice in his bones or the the Arctic in his heart or the cold blood running throughout his body. 

Yeah, he’s not sleeping anytime soon. Instead, he stumbles into the elevator and into the communal kitchen, where he knows there’s always a kettle brewing if JARVIS can detect someone awake. He almost makes it to the kitchen too, but then he hears a choked-off moan and then a slam and turns right back around. 

Instantly it hits him that tonight’s game night. Everyone’s likely to be awake right now, playing whatever they’ve decided upon. And honestly? It’s been too long since he’s actually played. So Steve decides to head there and find himself another distraction. 

_____ 

“Poker?” Steve asks from the doorway, commanding all of their attention instantly. With his eyes bloodshot and his face pale, he looks absolutely dreadful, like a ghost walking around. It doesn’t help that he’s only wearing a too-thin white tank and grey sweatpants that give Sam the unfortunate knowledge that Steve has pink and silver boxers that match his grey slippers. 

“Poker,” Natasha confirms, tilting her head towards the pile of jellybeans, marshmallows, and lifesavers that she currently has. Sam thinks she has too many for someone who claims not to be cheating, but unless he wants to find himself dying a slow death, he’s not going to say a single word. “You want in?”

Sam wonders how Steve’s going to be dealt in _now_ , unless Natasha’s feeling generous enough to share some of her own to Steve. Or maybe Pepper could pitch in a few as well, given how well the CEO is doing. 

“Sure,” Steve agrees all too easily for how shitty he looks. “I don’t think Bucky and Tony are coming back anytime soon, so I guess I’ll play with their chips. Err, candy.” 

Sam points to the dismally small pool of six marshmallows, three jellybeans and one lifesaver and shrugs sympathetically. “They weren’t exactly playing poker,” he explains and then points to the kitchen where they’re making out and/or having sex. 

Steve pulls a face. “No, I don’t think they were,” he agrees with the voice of someone who accidentally walked in on the two. Ooh, that’s a little rough. 

“Alright, I’m dealing,” Wanda says, sending cards flying impressively fast towards all of them, without her magic.

Sam immediately glances at his cards. He has a full house with three kings and two queens, which is pretty decent that he thinks he’ll play but not decent enough to go crazy or anything. Around the table, Natasha barely glances at her cards, Pepper stares at them like she’s figuring out what to do, Clint’s raising his eyebrows like he’s debating folding or not, Pietro’s rolling his eyes, Wanda’s impassively waiting, Bruce has a bad hand, and Rhodey looks like he has a good one. Vision looks confused, and Thor looks like he has a decent hand, just like Sam. And Steve? Steve’s frowning at the pile of candy that Bucky and Tony have, like it’s causing him physical pain to have such a small pile. 

“How badly was he distracted?” mutters Steve after shaking his head in disappointment at the pot. “Jesus.” 

“Very,” Sam responds. “We’re all very glad they decided to go somewhere else.”

“I’m guessing that the hierarchy is marshmallows, jellybeans, lifesavers, and sour candy?” Steve asks, staring at Natasha’s pile. “From lowest to highest.”

They all nod, and Steve sighs again at his pile. Sam really can’t blame him. Tony and Bucky’s pile makes Sam look like Natasha in comparison. And he sucks ass at playing poker with Avengers who are enhanced and secret card sharks.

”Can I trade my shirt for two sour candies?” Steve asks after a second. “Before we start?” 

“One,” Pepper immediately says with a smile. Steve instantly whips off his shirt and tosses it to her for one of her sour candies. 

Though as they all find out, he really didn’t need to ask for a sour candy. Steve turns out to be the ultimate cardshark who cleans all of them out. Sam doesn’t know how exactly Steve did it, but soon enough, even Natasha’s pile dwindles to a lowly seven jellybeans and one lifesaver. Pepper still has one sour candy left, on account of trading Steve’s shirt back (which isn’t exactly legal but whatever). 

Somehow, Sam’s still in the game with just one marshmallow and one jellybean, even though most people have been mercilessly cleaned out. He’s proud of himself. He’s also proud of the smirk on Steve’s face, the asshole.

_____

“I cannot believe you walked away from that game losing,” Steve says to him as he strolls in holding a bag of something. When Steve dumps the bag in Bucky’s lap, Bucky sees that it’s filled with sour candies, lifesavers, jellybeans and marshmallows. All things that Bucky loves, and Steve hates—or at least will not eat if he has a choice. “Shame on you.” 

Bucky doesn’t know what to think that these are all with him right now, and not already eaten by Natasha. “Wait,” he says instead, “When did you play poker?” 

“Little after you left, apparently,” Steve answers, rolling his eyes. “Because I played with your pool.” 

Bucky makes a face; he hadn’t exactly played poker last night as much as he had gotten distracted and lost. “In my defense, I had better things to focus on.” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, “I know. Everyone could hear it from the damned elevator.” He walks away after that, leaving the candy. 

_____ 

“Hey.” 

“Hey Steve.” 

“Um, could you just...” 

“Sure. This journal?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay!” 

_____ 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah!” 

“And he came to you?” 

“Yes!” 

“Small progresses for the win!” 

_____ 

Steve stares at his rapidly filling second journal, and the first one that’s right underneath it. Then he stares at the lilac card in his hand, slightly worn out from the pressure of having been at the bottom of his paper wastebin. He hates how everything stares back at him, including his nice and free calendar and his phone. 

He sighs and picks up the phone, feeling a wave of déjà vu from last time. But maybe this time, since he’s doing it out of free will and not desperation, he’ll do better than last time. He just has to be better. 

_____ 

There’s a blue note on the fridge when Sam goes to grab the last of the cherry pie. Since it’s written in a white paint pen that only Steve has (not to mention that this is his handwriting), Sam guesses that the ‘gone to visit an old friend’ means that Steve’s gone to D.C again. He sometimes wonders how Steve goes to D.C. so frequently when the drive from Albany to D.C takes a solid six hours _without_ traffic. And since it’s a round trip, that means it’s at least twelve hours without traffic. What does Steve do in all that time? 

Sam doesn’t know, and he doesn’t take the time to think about it. He just looks at the note again. There’s an arrow on the bottom of the note pointing right, which doesn’t make sense since there’s nothing next to the note. He ignores it and then actually opens the fridge. No cherry pie. He groans and then takes a look at Steve’s note again, flipping it over. 

“Sorry for whoever wanted the cherry pie :( ” it says. 

_____

Technically the drive to D.C. takes around three hours if he decides to disregard speed laws. Which he does, much to the chagrin of well-meaning police officers. Frequently. So sue him.

_____ 

“I lied,” Steve loudly declares as he drops a pair of keys into the important (and shared) key holder. “I’m not taking a break from anything, or even trying to take a break.” 

“Would’a never guessed,” Bucky dryly comments as he looks behind his shoulder to see his best friend, who is soaking wet from the rain outside. “Really?” 

Steve shoots him a dirty look as he drops the bag in his hands on the floor, pulling out a towel that he apparently carries around. In one fluid movement, he towels off his face, his arms, and his hair, tossing the towel on top of his bag when he’s done. “I hate humid rain,” he says, frowning as he runs his hands through his bangs. They land slightly on his forehead, damp but not stopping wet anymore. 

“No umbrella?” Tony asks. “Come on, I know that there got to be about a dozen somewhere.” 

“Kind of hard to hold an umbrella on a motorcycle,” Steve says, frowning down at his jeans again. His jacket—waterproof—is fine, but not those. “I hate rain. Period. It’s been following me from D.C.” 

Steve suddenly sneezes. And apparently the serum doesn’t fix that, because it’s still the same adorable puppy sneeze from the 30s. 

“That’s the cutest sneeze I’ve ever heard,” Tony says as he tries to hold back a laugh. Bucky has no qualms. He laughs. “Aw.” 

Steve sneezes again. He sighs. “I didn’t know I could even do that anymore.” He sneezes for a third time. “I hate rain.”

_____

Things go back to normal for them, as much as possible. Everyone can breathe again. 

_____

This is not a happy ending. At least, not yet.

_____ 

Steve’s phone rings loudly on the kitchen counter top, though Steve is nowhere in sight. When Natasha checks the caller ID, a short but direct _Hill_ , she picks up. There has to be a reason that Maria would be calling. 

“Romanoff,” she says in greeting. 

“Where’s Rogers?” Maria asks. If there was even a chance that this wasn’t a work call, then this pretty much killed it. Pity. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Natasha responds. “Why?” 

She can all but hear Maria’s sigh. “Tell him that even the clouds are waiting for his presence at HQ.” 

“Mission?” Natasha asks. 

“Less than a week if it goes as planned.”

_____ 

“Hill called? And the clouds are waiting for me?” 

“Yes.” 

“The clouds.” 

“Well, it wasn’t the ground.” 

“She said word for word that it’s the clouds?” 

“Yes. What’s wrong with the clouds, Steve?” 

“It’s where they are that matters. Say, know any good flower shops nearby?” 

“ _WHAT_?” 

“Inside joke.” 

“With Hill?” 

“God no.”

_____

Well, not _just_ Maria, in Steve’s defense. All of Coulson’s team. Because of Skye. He always gets her a singular flower to annoy her. He decides he’ll just go visit a flower shop when he arrives in D.C.

_____ 

Steve wakes up alone at a hospital. There are no calendars or clocks.

_____ 

“I want to know just who exactly though it was a great idea to place Steve Rogers in a no-visitor room. Without a single device that indicates the time and date. I cannot believe someone had the incompetence to ignore one of the only major details about—move him.” 

She hangs up. Maria pinches the bridge of her nose and makes herself walk into Skye’s hospital room (visitors allowed) instead of storming down to where they have Steve and forcibly making everyone move him. They have the message; they better carry it out. 

“Boss lady,” Skye says to her with a grin, and then a wince. 

“Your team is waiting for you,” she says impersonally. “Would you like them in?”

”Yeah, definitely,” Skye agrees, and Maria can see how the other woman is trying to keep herself breathing steady to stay out of pain. “After you go. Speaking of, and I’m not trying to be rude, why are you here?” 

“Mind if I ask a question?” 

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” 

“During your week, did Captain Rogers call anyone outside of SHIELD?” Skye looks surprised at the question, like she hasn’t expected for her to ask that specific one. It was almost like she expected a different kind. 

“He texted someone for an hour on his burner phone on Wednesday. Not a call though,” Skye says, lifting her hand a little to make a so-so gesture. 

Maria nods and leaves the room, signaling for May and Coulson to go in as she walks away. She decides to pay Steve a visit at the other side of medical. She has questions, including the lingering one of why he texted his therapist’s receptionist during an undercover op. 

_____

This time, Natasha gets the phone call from Maria. Five bullets. D.C.  

_____

Steve wakes up in a different hospital room and immediately sees a little screen that tells him both the time and date. And then he sees Maria, who puts down her phone the second she sees that he’s awake. 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, knowing that she’s probably here for trying to escape the first time around. “I... overreacted.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him, as if to ask, _you_ _think_? Her words, on the other hand, are sympathetic. “This place is filled with idiots.” 

He smiles at that. Steve almost laughs, but something tells him that he would immediately regret laughing. And by something he means the pain in his chest that definitely is the result of a bad bullet. 

“You’re included,” she says before he tries to change the conversation. “Five bullets? Either break some records or don’t get _shot_.” 

“Maybe I was trying to break a record,” he responds with an innocent grin that will never work on her. “And failed.” 

“Impossible. Do you know how much respect I have for every single person in your life who’s had to keep you out of killing yourself in stupidity?” Maria asks in the same exasperated voice he’s heard from said people who have tried to keep him from killing himself in said stupidity. 

“How’s Skye?” he asks, blatantly trying to avoid her yelling at him. 

She glares at him, but lets it go. “In much better condition than you.” 

“That’s good,” he says, the concern assuaged instantly. “How long am I supposed to stay here?” 

“You know that there’s still a bullet in you, right?” Maria asks instead, checking her phone when it flashes at her. 

“Is that what that is?” Steve asks. “I think I can feel it being pushed out.” 

She holds up a hand to stop him from talking. “Say anything else, and I’m pushing it back in you.”

”Squeamish?” he teases. 

“Do you _think_ I’m squeamish?” she challenges back. 

_____

When the rest of the team starts arguing on who gets to visit first (only two at a time), Wanda decides that she’s just going to slip in and bypass everything. By the time she closes the door behind her, Natasha’s already inside, clearly thinking the same thing. She feels oddly proud of herself for thinking of the same thing as the Black Widow, if only a little slower. Is this what Sam feels like? 

Well, she may not know that, but she knows what Steve is feeling, the utter idiot. Pain. And a lot of it. 

“How are you looking that calm?” Wanda asks, appalled that if _she_ can feel it this intensely, then something’s seriously wrong and he’s just smiling serenely like nothing is wrong. “How?” 

Natasha eyes her curiously, but remains silent. 

“It’s fine,” he lies obviously, and Natasha’s eyes snap to him this time, narrowing. “Don’t look at me like that. Either of you.” 

“You just snapped out of a nightmare,” Natasha says flatly. “Something hurts, and it’s probably your breathing since something is pushing itself out right now, isn’t it? And couple that with the fact that you want to breathe and wake up from whatever the nightmare was, and you’re in _pain_.”

Suddenly, the glint on Natasha’s eyes that appears suggests that she knows full well what the nightmare was. By how Steve’s eyes pointedly don’t look at Natasha and instead the calendar, Wanda thinks she knows too. 

_____

“I don’t care how you do it, but you’re finding out what happened to Steve.” 

“What happened to Steve?” 

“He kept staring at the calendar. _Find_ _out_ , Tony. And Maria won’t say a single word.” 

“About the mission or his nightmares?” 

“Take your pick.” 

“Goddamn Natasha.” 

_____ 

“You can’t go anywhere without hurting yourself anymore, can you?” Bucky says exasperatedly, throwing his hands up in an exaggeration. Well, at least Steve hopes he doesn’t mean it. “At least break a few records, at this point.” 

“Funny,” he responds, even though it’s not, “Someone else just said that to me, too.” 

Bucky and Tony look like they’ve visibly aged ten years when he says that. He rolls his eyes. 

“Actually, no. You’re forbidden,” Tony quickly backtracks, shaking his head and gesturing emphatically with his hands. He accidentally smacks Bucky when he signals a giant X. Bucky smacks him back, on the ass this time though. Tony doesn’t even look fazed as he continues, “You hear me? Forbidden. Do I need to spell that out for you? F-O-R-mmph!” 

Bucky slaps a hand over Tony’s mouth and looks like he regrets everything. “Okay,” he says. “Hurt yourself again, and I’m letting him spell out that word from Mary Poppins next time.” 

“Oh no,” Steve sarcastically says. “Not _supercalifragilisticexpialidocious_.” 

“You’re real sarcastic for someone hooked to as many wires as they have brain cells,” Bucky frowns, but maybe that’s because Steve can say the word both forwards and backwards _and_ he can spell it without failing miserably. He’s very proud of that.

But then Bucky turns to Tony. “Stop licking my hand; you think that’s going to be the thing that grossed me out?” 

Steve sighs. Somehow, he thinks this is simultaneously worse and better than getting yet another lecture about safety. 

“Hey,” he says after a second, “There’s only two things I’m hooked to.” 

“Only two,” Bucky repeats with a glare that’s growing murderous with every second. “Only two, he says.”

_____

“You find it?” 

“Before you can chew them out, Hill’s already done that.” 

“She has?” 

“Thoroughly. And hey, I didn’t think you or Wanda had in either of you to tell Steve to break a few records.” 

“We didn’t. That’s basically giving him the green light to do it.” 

“Oh. But he said that someone before us told him to—oh. Huh. Didn’t think Hill had it in her either.” 

“She... not with people she doesn’t trust.” 

_____ 

Steve wakes up and sees Natasha—or at least someone he can vaguely recognize to be Natasha since she’s apparently in disguise. He decides that he’s going to play whatever game she wants to, especially since he can’t run away when he’s strapped down to his hospital bed. 

“What are you doing?” he asks in confusion. 

“I’m starting rumors,” she says. “About you and a random brunette lady.” 

“Because you’re visiting me, and only people close to me are allowed that?” Steve asks dryly, raising an eyebrow. “Great. Fantastic. How did you get in, though?” 

“Maria Hill,” Natasha says, now giving him a pointed look. The brown hair makes sense instantly. 

“Well,” he grins, giving nothing away, “Can you ask her to get me out of here? I’m perfectly fine now.” 

“Ask her yourself. She came to see you, right?” Natasha asks, and god, she’s definitely suspicious. But why now? Why the only time when she has to reason to be suspicious? 

“You make it sound like she came to check up on me,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “You think Hill cares? She just yelled at me in that bureaucratic way she does.” 

Natasha is not mollified. He wants to laugh at her right now, at the irony that she thinks that there’s something  etween him and Hill when there _isn’t_ , for the first time in years. Quite literally, they are just friends now. 

“She told you to break a few records; that isn’t not caring.” 

“Is Tony gossiping again? Hill wasn't the only one to see me.” That, at least, is true. Coulson’s team had come to thank him, though what for, he doesn’t know. Skye still ended up in the hospital, right alongside him. 

_____

“Verdict?” 

“Coy is not a word people use to describe him, and they should.” 

“Can’t tell?” 

“Oh, I can tell. They’re sadly just friends. If even friends and not colleagues.” 

“Damn. I would have been impressed if he had a secret relationship. And hurt.”

_____ 

“Hey,” he brightly says to her when she walks into his room. 

Maria sighs, she knows just what he’s going to say. “Yes, you are being released. No, the information is classified and off-the-books so they won’t find out. No, you cannot tell them.” 

“I wasn’t going to,” he says innocently, and this she can believe him on. But there’s something else. “Even if Natasha is determined on finding out.” 

His voice is direct, and Maria suppresses the urge to sigh again. She still doesn’t know what made her approve Natasha’s entrance in that ridiculous cover, but she’s about to find out why. 

“Has she?” Maria asks neutrally. 

“No,” he simply says, smirking. “They haven’t. You said it yourself; off-the-books.” 

Maria has a sharp feeling that someone is monitoring this conversation. Her eyes catch a small bug planted and seemingly blending in with the unnecessary (well, unnecessary now, since he’s fine now) equipment in the room. Very well then. Shame on her for not noticing before, even if she always assumes that every conversation is bugged unless proven otherwise. 

“When the doctors arrive,” Maria says instead, keeping her eyes firmly on him and out of the direction of the bug, “Debrief.” 

He pulls a face, but she can tell he understands that she wants him to go see Skye. “Hasn’t that already been done?” 

“Captain Rogers,” she says, and a smile grows larger on his face. 

“Lieutenant Hill,” he responds, and she leaves. 

_____

Steve flies back to the Compound, since apparently he’s not allowed to use his motorcycle for the next few days. Waiting for him is more or less the entire team (apparently Vision and Bruce were out) and basically the friendliest version of an interrogation. He consistently says the word ‘classified’ and then shuts up all together. 

_____ 

“You think we should get Cap a girlfriend?” 

“Always.” 

“Nat, that’s a bad idea.” 

“He should!” 

“Nat.” 

“Clint.” 

“Bad idea. That’s up there on the list of bad ideas right now.” 

_____

“I can’t get drunk,” Steve says for what feels to be like the millionth time. 

“Guess what Loki brought down with him last time,” Natasha says, holding a small flask. 

Steve eyes Natasha, the flask, and then looks down to the bottle of vodka in his hands. He opens the bottle and then points to the flask. “Tip it in.” Natasha does. 

_____

Bucky wants to know whose bad idea it is to get Steve drunk literally two days after he’s released from the hospital. Or to get Steve drunk, period. Apparently no one even listens to his stories of pre-serum Steve, because they wanted to find out what Steve is like drunk. 

Steve is a happy drunk. Steve is a happy drunk who has not a care in the world, besides getting everyone around him to be happy too. Steve is a happy, affectionate, and laughing drunk who will. Not. Stop. Laughing. Or giggling. Trust him, Bucky knows everything about Drunk Steve. It also takes a long while for Steve to get drunk, something that also was true before the serum, surprisingly. He blames Irish blood. Drunk Steve is a person of his own, at this point. 

And apparently, Drunk Steve will not stop flirting. With Sam. Just Sam.

“I would tap that,” Steve is slurring as he grins flirtatiously at Sam. “No. Wait. No. You.” 

“Me what?” Sam asks, preening at the compliments and showing off to everyone else, but also fond of Steve. 

“Tap,” Steve says, dragging out the vowel like it explains everything. And then he laughs and tries to stand up. He really cannot stand up and falls back down on the couch. He tries again. 

“Oh my god,” Bucky says, making his presence known to everyone now (even though he knows that Natasha probably knew... and Wanda). “Who did this?” 

“Bucky!” Steve loudly greets, his entire face lighting up like Bucky just told him he gave a million dollars to charity or something. “I’m drunk!” Bucky wants to make a sarcastic remark of how he _hadn’t_ noticed, actually, but decides that he’s just going to let that one go. 

“I’ve noticed,” he says, glaring at the rest of the team, who are nowhere near as wanted as Steve. He knows that everyone is curious, but really? Really? Getting Steve drunk now? The irritation comes back. Even if Steve was the one who got drunk by himself, he wonders why no one tried to stop him. 

“You look sad,” Steve frowns, but as Drunk Steve is incapable of being sad for longer than two seconds, it turns around again. “Why?” 

“I’m not sad. Just very concerned. You should probably go to sleep.”

Steve pulls a face at the mention of sleep and takes a sip out of a vodka bottle in response. Bucky immediately begins to wonder if supersoldiers can get hangovers or not. The alcohol that Thor brought before Ultron has gotten Steve just barely tipsy, since he hadn’t drunk much of it. But the bottle of vodka near Steve is almost empty, and Bucky would bet anything it had been spiked by the empty Asgardian-looking flask on the table. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, wondering why he feels like he’s back in the August of 1939 and Steve’s found himself in a lightweight drinking competition and also _winning_. “Come on.” 

Bucky wonders if alcohol poisoning applies to supersoldiers. Especially Asgardian alcohol poisoning. Does the Asgardian part cancel out the supersoldier part? Yeah, he definitely feels like he’s back in 1939 trying to figure out what Steve drank and how bad it was or would be. 

_____ 

Steve groans when he wakes up, already feeling a strange headache pounding. He also has no recollection of why he has a headache, and why he seems to be on a couch. 

Then he smells alcohol all around him, and has a pretty good idea of what could have happened.  

He stumbles his way up and off the couch, avoiding bottles and slumbering people all around him. Steve thinks that everyone will have a nasty surprise when they all wake up, so he heads to the kitchen to make food. 

But there’s already someone cooking food. Two someones, actually, and the entire kitchen smells heavenly. Or maybe that’s him and his appetite talking.

“Where’s the coffee?” Steve asks, looking around and finding absolutely nothing. “I need coffee.” 

“Coffee does nothing for you,” Bucky reminds at the same time Tony says, “Coffee doesn’t help.” 

“I need something stronger than caffeine,” he mutters underneath his breath, completely aware that both of them can hear him. 

“But less than cocaine?” Tony guesses with a grin. 

Steve groans again as the headache pulses through him. He’s just glad he doesn’t have to throw up. “I’ll take the damned cocaine right now,” he says instead, sitting down onto one of the counter stools and dropping his head down onto the counter. He’s not going to get himself this drunk (or drunk, period) in a long while. 

_____

The rest of the Avengers shuffle in one by one into the kitchen. Bucky continues to give out plates of hangover food, aspirin, and water. Almost everyone grumbles about coffee, but Tony gleefully cuts them all off. After the third no, Bucky’s starting to wonder if Tony’s just getting revenge for all the times that someone has cut Tony off. After the fifth time, Bucky just _knows_ that has to be true.

“You’re having too much fun with this,” Bucky says. 

“Oops.” 

_____

“I did _what_?” Steve asks, but he probably would care more if he wasn’t too busy eating. “And no one stopped me?” 

“You're acting like that was new,” Clint says, laughing into a donut. Is that a donut? Maybe a bagel. Steve doesn’t care. 

“What do you mean? I haven’t—I—no,” Steve says, caring just a little more now that he knows it wasn’t just a one time thing. Which is confusing, because why would he hit on only Sam when he was drunk? He isn’t about to deny to himself that Sam would be his type—brunette, sassy, competent, charming, unfairly handsome—but he really doesn’t even think of Sam like that. Nor will he ever. 

“Before you met him for the second time,” Natasha smirks. Steve guesses by ‘the second time’ that she means when he had amnesia.

Steve turns to Sam. “I’m so sorry. _So_ sorry. I don’t know why I would have flirted like I meant it, but I really do apologize if it was rude.” 

Sam shakes his head, grinning. “Nah, it’s all good. Great ego boost. Feel free to call me hot anytime you want.”

Steve internally sighs of relief. But instead of saying anything, he just winks at Sam in return and then goes back to his waffles. 

Natasha wolf-whistles. He glares, but suspects his glare isn’t any efficient because he has a mouthful of chocolate syrup and waffles. 

_____ 

“I’m just having a bad day,” Steve groans the next morning, for the second time, when someone wakes him up by throwing something at him. He hasn’t opened his eyes to look yet. Facing anyone’s disappointed face on this team is hard enough. “Leave me alone.”

“You smell like a bar threw up on you for the second day in a row,” Natasha’s distinguishable voice says. She doesn’t sound disappointed. Or like anything, really.

“I _was_ at a bar,” he mumbles. 

“Good for you,” she says. “Get up, it’s two and everyone’s concerned.” 

“I fucked up,” he says. “Leave me alone.” 

Something else hits him, and once again, he still doesn’t open his eyes. Steve blindly gropes the space near his head for his pillow and then pulls it over his head and face. Natasha, presumably, yanks it out of his hands. 

“If I say I’m tired can you let me go? M’sleeping.” 

Steve can just _hear_ a frown in her voice when she says, “Tired from crying? Likely story. Have you seen your face?” 

“Go away,” he says, letting the insult slide. “I don’t care.” 

_____ 

Natasha does no such thing. Natasha ends up listening to Steve cry into his pillow—another one—when he talks about someone he ran into last night that reminded him too much of Peggy Carter and someone else who Natasha thinks was a fellow USO member. She also ends up learning that Steve is absolutely an ugly crier minus the snot. The little tidbit does nothing to hide the fact that the things that Steve says sometimes are downright devastating. Natasha knows devastation; she’s often the cause of it and she’s studied its center too much for devastation  _not_ to be a close friend. 

Still, even her heart breaks a little when Steve says that he’s betraying _everyone_ he knows (and knew) by liking this life but reminiscing about his old one too much.

_____ 

“And... he just told you.” 

“Yes.” 

“Just like that?” 

“Just like that.” 

“Damn. What, you give him a hug after that, too?” 

“I did, actually.” 

“I was joking. Because you don’t... give hugs.” 

“Do you want a hug, Sam?” 

“Get those knives away from me.” 

_____ 

Steve finds Wanda crying softly, tears falling onto pages of a book in her hands. 

“Hey,” he says. “You want to talk about it?” 

Her eyes are red-rimmed when she looks up to him. “No, I don’t,” she says, wiping her tears swiftly and blinking rapidly, to get the rest of the moisture out and dry her eyes out. Steve knows that trick. Steve’s known that trick for almost a century. 

“Okay,” he says. “Do you want me out?” 

She stares at him for a second, shaking her head yes but quickly changing the yes into a no. With a hand, she gestures for him to sit down somewhere and to stay. 

“Maybe you’ll understand,” she says, “Because they are here as well. It’s close, isn’t it? He’s my other half, and the person I value above all, and for you it is a different life but still the same sentiment.” 

Steve blinks and then tries to parse through all that. 

“He is _alive_ ,” she says. “Why can’t I appreciate that? Why do I keep reliving how he died?” 

Then it clicks. She’s talking about Pietro, and how Pietro ‘dying’ and coming back is kind of like Bucky ‘dying’ and coming back. She saw his body shot with nearly a dozen bullets after it happened, saw his body bleeding out and Steve watched Bucky fall off a train. 

“Because it’s your worst nightmare, and what happens when you fail, when it’s your fault,” Steve darkly says, realizing that she was right. He does understand. “When you fuck up, everyone you love dies around you, but not you. It’s a nightmare a lot of people have, but for people like us? You’ve really seen it, and it is your fault. That’s why you keep reliving it and why it haunts you. But someone once told me that it isn’t your fault. Someone once said that you have to let other people be other people. And that everyone’s capable of choices, so it isn’t your fault.” 

Somewhere in that, Steve wonders when he began talking about himself. Somewhere in that, that wasn’t something he was saying to her, it was something he was saying to the both of them. 

Wanda huffs a bitter laugh, still a little haunted. “Well, sounds like someone was saying that before they knew what they were talking about.” 

“No,” he says, “It sounds like someone was right, because my other alternative was to bottle it up and either cry by myself or pretend it didn’t exist. Someone was definitely talking the truth.” 

She stays quiet for a long time, long enough that Steve considers getting up and leaving her alone and _then_ sending someone else who can actually talk about feelings. He’s probably worst person, even if he understands. Maybe the understanding bit is what makes it worse, because he knows why it’s easy to believe the guilt and he can’t fix it. 

“I would like a hug,” she says when he gets up. See, that he can do without fucking up. Steve likes to think he gives pretty decent hugs. 

_____

“Hey Pietro.” 

“Yeah Steve?” 

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but what’s one thing that you remember most about your parents?” 

“This is for Wanda?” 

“Yes. How did you—” 

“Please, as if I cannot tell whenever she is grieving for me and our parents.” 

“Oh. Well she doesn’t—” 

“Wanda forgets the fact that I know her better than I know myself. Frequently. She gives good advice, and she can feel everything that everyone else feels, but she forgets about herself. Much like you.” 

“Hey!” 

“Tell me, do I lie?” 

_____ 

Tony doesn’t know what to think when he says yes to Pietro’s request of twenty paprika-filled balloons, but clearly he’s fed up with the Compound if he doesn’t even blink. 

_____

“Hey Wanda,” he greets to her the next day, clearly in good spirits. 

“Hey Steve,” she says in return, also in better spirits from yesterday. 

“Are you up for another one of those nothing barred spars?” he asks. 

She grins sharply. “Yes.” 

______

Steve never thought he’d be living in a world where he has to dodge treadmills being thrown at him by a friend, no less a world where he would enjoy having weights thrown at him. But here he is, doing just that and having a blast. Most people would assume that Wanda and him never spar because he’s physically-gifted and she’s more ability-gifted, but they could not be more wrong. This is when things get fun. 

“Yield!” Wanda yells, red fire in her eyes as she hurls another burst of magic at him. He flips, ducks, and jumps out of the way, hurling both his shield and two knives at her, aiming for deadly spots. 

She, of course, stops attacking him for a second, to create a forcefield around herself by crossing her arms in an X in front of her. In that second, he leaps, grabs his shield, and kicks her down before she can do something else to him. And then, he runs, shielding himself from the inevitable, which turns out to be another red ball of anger. 

“No!” he grunts back, knowing full well that he has a disadvantage on the offense (and the defense, if he’s fully being honest) and still ready to fight. Steve is actually having the time of his life showing off and using the serum to its full extent. But not in a way that’s bad for him. “Give up!”

He throws his shield again when she’s preparing an Energy Ball of Doom again and two things happen. His shield collides with the blast she aims his way, blocking her blast. His shield veers off course and nicks her leg before landing without returning like he originally planned it for. 

“No!” she yells, groaning and glaring at the traitorous spot of red on her leg. “Oh, fuck.”

“Ha,” he yells again, and gets a weak energy blast to the stomach in retaliation. Weak or not, his back ends up colliding with a wall. And since he has no self-preservation, “Round 2?” 

_____

Sam stops and stares when he sees everyone sitting on fold-up chairs in front of the gym and watching something happen in the gym. Natasha and Clint even have popcorn. And Tony seems to be announcing something like he’s a sportscaster. Pietro is cheering. Vision looks like he’s debating if it is worth or not to cheer as well, and that’s probably the scariest thing, since Vision is working on emoting and the fact that he has that expression down is concerning. 

Sam looks at the last empty chair and decides that he going to watch... Steve and Wanda try to beat the shit out of each other. Holy shit, are they trying to murder each other? Does he need to call someone? Why is everyone watching calmly? Holy shit. 

“They’re going for first blood, not murder, relax,” Natasha says from his right. He decides to go with it. And then she asks, “Popcorn?” 

The popcorn does smell good. 

_____ 

He’s about to throw his shield directly at her again, and her own defenses are taking time to come to her. Shameless or not, she thinks up a different defense and yells, “You should talk to them!” 

Steve’s eyes widen and the shield veers off-course, missing her by mere centimeters. He bounces back from the attack soon enough, shooting at her rapidly. The bullets will never hit her; she has perfected this trick long ago for it to be anything but a stalling tactic from Steve currently. 

“You’re kidding me!” he yells back, ducking and jumping a few times in succession, and now she realizes that the comment has rolled off of him now. This will not do. 

“You’re being an idiot!” This does nothing to Steve, who merely laughs and grabs his shield again from where it fell. He throws three knives towards her arms and her right leg, but she easily deflects all of them. Honestly, the hardest part about deflecting his knives is making sure she doesn’t ruin them. 

“You should tell them!” she yells, ducking as a gunshot goes for her head. Wanda grins, adrenaline spiking again, and Steve just laughs at her again. She blasts (or tries to) him five times in succession. One gets his left leg, but doesn’t draw blood. She groans. 

“Oh _GREAT_!” Steve grunts, flipping and kicking away from her attacks. He moves so gracefully, but she has no time to appreciate his movements. Clearly he's already braced himself for anything else she can say. “Now?” 

“You know what they _are_ to you!” Wanda exclaims, her voice rising and squeaking a little near the end when something came a little too close to her past her defenses. 

She can hear Steve’s sigh before he forcefully hurls his shield at her. “Wanda!” 

“Admit it!” she taunts, aiming two of his own knives (now on the floor) at him. He avoids one, but the other strikes his arm, leaving a line of red. Both of them freeze. 

“Yes!” Wanda yells, throwing her arms up in excitement. “Ha!”

_____

Round three starts fairly quickly after round two, but it is nothing like either of its precedents. If they seemed to want to murder each other before, well this was them bloodthirsty and merciless. Tony had fun narrating the first round, and then he had stopped halfway through the second since it had seemed that Wanda and Steve were talking. It had stopped being fun after that stop, since apparently there was something Steve was hiding (like that was new) and it was related to him. 

But now? This was bloody murder on both sides, with both of them yelling and hurling insults and weapons at each other. These were things that no one else was supposed to hear, judging by how freely they were fighting. These were deep secrets that were not supposed to be shared. And Wanda kept on hinting something about Steve in relation to Tony and Bucky that kept on spurring Steve on. What did she know? What was it? And why did Wanda keep yelling to Steve about time? Was it a dig about losing it? That would be cold, too cold for this.

_____ 

“Damned _hypocrite_!” Steve hisses loudly when Wanda uses her magic to hurl his shield at him. It gets him right in the ribs, son of a _bitch_ , and he goes flying backwards as she hurls energy ball after energy last at him, pushing him right to the wall. Again. 

“ _Oh_ ,” she scoffs, wiping a line of blood from her jaw from where he had nicked her. He suspects she’s just waiting for him to get back up again. “ _I’m_ the hypocrite? _I’m_ the hypocrite?” She blasts him again when he gets back up. 

Steve eyes his shield, and before she can throw something else at him, he throws it back at her. He’s ever so grateful that most people don’t know how to move it around like he can, because he would have been fucked if the shield hadn’t landed with him.  

“I see you fighting with me as much as I’m fighting with you,” he says, and then shoots her again. Wanda glares at him, annoyed, and uses her magic to shatter the bullet into a hundred pieces, which she then floats over to the trash can of busted weapons. “Must be nice,” he continues, “Throwing stones.” 

“At least I don’t run away,” Wanda yells, eyes narrowing in a challenge. “From the things that matter!” 

“But at least I've never compromised my morals!” 

_____

It should be game over for Steve, everyone thinks, when he makes a unwarranted, under-the-belt dig at Wanda about Ultron. Even if they don’t understand what spurred this bloody fight on, they had thought that it wasn’t going to be like this. They still when Wanda pauses at that, her expression shocked to high hell. Steve’s face has nothing but a challenging smirk, which is so uncharacteristic of him that something has to be wrong. When she’s still frozen, he flips his shield and sends it so that it knocks her to the ground, without harming her much though. 

But Wanda doesn’t react like they thought she would. She grins, in a manner almost feral, and gets right back, using her magic to throw the shield back to Steve. 

And then shouts something else that makes them all wince again. 

_____ 

“No? I haven’t been lying to every person I’ve ever met!” Wanda levels back, and then she gives him a look to tell him just what she means by that. “At least I stayed _loyal_ to someone!” 

Steve looks like he’s halfway between shooting her, or looking so proud. Actually, Wanda thinks he’s surprisingly leaning towards clapping for her right there and the comment. Sadly for her, he doesn’t, but he does pull out a taser. From where, she has absolutely no clue. 

Wanda hates tasers. Little known fact, but her magic is weakened for a minute or so whenever someone tasers her. She glares, and then mentally starts preparing a defense. And an offense that will keep him down. 

_____

He aims projectile after knife at her, and keeps her defense occupied for they minute that he knows she can’t use her magic to do both and offense and defense. Steve throws a lot at her, and some of them make their mark on her. Wanda looks increasingly frustrated. 

“Loyal?” Steve scoffs when she seems to be at full powers again. “Tell me, when was the last time you used your other powers on someone here? What about Natasha?” 

“Got an issue with my powers, Rogers?” Wanda yells, grinning as she throws a set of weights at him. 

“They fucked me up!” Steve retaliates, knowing that she wouldn’t take this one to heart either. There is only one thing he knows he can’t bring up to Wanda, and that he will take to his grave. “More than once!” 

_____ 

“Wait,” Natasha says, anger in her eyes. “What about me?” 

“Maybe we should leave,” Sam quietly says, because he’s still trying to figure out some of the stuff that they have said to each other. “This is personal.” 

“No,” Bucky, Natasha, and Tony exclaim at the same time. 

_____

“You know who else fucked you up?” Wanda asks, and Steve is the one to freeze this time. 

“How the _fuck_ do you know?” Steve roars, and damn, she could almost be scared of him like this. 

She grins. “Oh come on, if you wanted to keep a relationship from me, you should have tried harder.” 

_____ 

“Wait,” Natasha says, a little angrier and betrayed. “Steve’s in a relationship?” 

_____ 

“Yeah? Well, I _bet_ ,” Steve pauses for a second as he avoids a punching bag, “You and Vision think you’re being so stealthy. Everyone knows.” 

“No,” Wanda corrects, “They know I like him. That’s it.” 

_____ 

“I’m so proud,” Tony says as he turns to Vision. “You talked to Wanda? I’m actually so proud. We’re going to have a party. You’re grown up now!” 

“Wanda is an amazingly determined woman,” Vision says, and Tony can almost swear that he can hear affection in his voice. Actually, there might be literal stars in Vision’s eyes. 

_____

“At least,” she continues. “I’m not _scared_!” 

“Yield,” Steve gasps, tapping the floor with his left hand, full aware he’s bleeding from it. “Yield!” 

_____

“Did he just yield?” Bucky asks, blinking in amazement. “Damn.” 

_____ 

Steve takes the hand that she’s offered him, and then grins. “Alright, do your magic.” She closes her eyes and he feels her magic surround him. He knows that no one else trusts her like this, not yet, and he knows that he would be yelled at if everyone knew that he let her do this, but she’s good at healing. Scarily good. Best of all, her magic also does something to his energy so that he doesn’t feel like he’s been fighting for his life. It’s like the fight never happened. 

She opens her eyes, and Steve feels the tingly feeling leave him. But he looks at himself, and checks for any wounds or blood and there is none. As soon as she finishes healing herself he says, “Thanks.” 

“No worries,” she says. “I think we both needed that.” 

Steve looks around at the demolished gym, which is probably the only evidence that a fight happened. It’s damning evidence, though. “Yeah,” he says. “Now we just have to clean up.” 

Wanda dryly looks at him, her lips curving into a smirk. “If you tell Tony and Bucky that you love them, then I’ll do the entire gym myself.” 

Steve laughs at her. He’s rather take the de-stressing feeling of cleaning and fixing, thank you very much. “If you think that that would have worked,” he says, “I don’t know what to tell you.” 

She pulls a face at him. “You’re an idiot. You know something? You should have never turned them down in the first place.” 

Steve shakes his head. “You know that I don’t—” 

“If you’re going to tell me that you turned them down because you thought they didn’t deserve your fucked-up mind, I’m making _you_ clean the entire thing,” she threatens. “If you tell it that you did it for them, and that they’ll be better off without you, I’m telling them myself.” 

“Hey,” he protests lightly, “Didn’t we just finish the entire emotional soul-bearing part a minute ago?” 

“I’m just saying,” she says. “That I know what you’re thinking, and that it’s wrong. I’m telling you now because a) you’re in good spirits right now, and because b) they deserve to know.” 

He stares at her, and sighs. “Yeah, but I’ve gone and put a dent in it now even if I wanted to tell them.” 

“No,” Wanda shakes her head. “You haven’t. Don’t you see? They’re just as much gone for you as you are for them. I bet that you don’t even know _how_ they started to fall for each other.” 

“And you know?” Steve asks.

She laughs loudly. “Steve,” Wanda chides when she’s almost done making fun of him with her laughter, “ _Everyone_ knows but you.”

The look on his must be priceless, because she stops laughing after a minute and then claps his shoulder. “Fine,” she says, still smiling with a joke that apparently everyone but him knows. “Let’s grab food and then fix this up.” 

_____

She’s still laughing at him for remaining oblivious when they both step out the gym and see everyone sitting outside, in foldable chairs, as they seemed shocked about something. Wanda and Steve freeze. The team freezes. They stay in complete silence before she has the courage to ask if they were watching her. No one says anything, but she sees guilty faces that give her all the answer she needs. 

Wanda has a terrifying feeling that they weren’t just watching. “Hey FRIDAY?” She quietly asks, looking at Steve who seems to be thinking the same thing as her. “What mode is the gym in?” 

She hopes that it isn’t spectator mode. Spectator mode is the one that the people outside of the gym could listen and watch the people inside the gym, but only one way. Like a TV. 

“Currently the gym is in a spectator mode,” FRIDAY supplies. 

Wanda feels her heart drop. She fully turns to Steve, whose face is blank and expressionless. Oh god. Oh god. Oh fuck, this is not good. For all that she threatened to tell everyone... she would have never done it if he didn’t want her to. And now...

_____

“...spectator mode,” FRIDAY says, and his worst suspicions come true. Every single word that either of them have said are now words that all of them know. Every secret, every single sentence they would have dared not say in front of anyone else, out. 

Wanda’s face flushes with apology towards him, but he should be apologizing too, if apologies are going to be given. He said as many things as she did. He spilled and hurled as much abuse as she did, because that was what their fight was for. To say everything that they wouldn’t say normally. 

”Let’s get food,” she says quietly, and he follows her out, though his heart’s not in food right now. Any appetite he could have had vanishes before he could entertain it. 

Both of them turn to leave, before they hear a panicked voice telling them to wait. 

“Wait,” Bucky says, but Steve can’t turn around to see the look on his best friend’s face right now. He can’t see what either of them, or any of them, look like right now. He can imagine, since his imagination is running wild with what’s possibly in their minds right now. 

Steve doesn’t wait. 

_____

They find Steve lying bodily on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and lost in his own head. There’s a journal on the coffee table next to him, and a pencil that doesn’t seem to be one of his drawing ones. He’s still wearing a black tank and his sweatpants, his hair messed up and flopping into his forehead. 

“Steve,” Bucky softly says, reaching for the strange journal to hold it up and ask what it is. It burns the second he touches it, and jolts him a little. He stares at it, wondering what the hell it is if it’s a book with energy. Normal books don’t zap. Before Tony can touch it, Bucky gently pushes Tony’s hand away. If it hurt him, enhanced as he is, then chances are it’s going to hurt more to Tony. “Steve, come on.” 

“Don’t touch that,” Steve says a second too late, his voice hopelessly tired. 

“Why not?” Tony asks. Bucky can see the scientist in Tony trying to puzzle out the book already. Tony’s already trying to figure out what makes this book tick and work.

“It’s not for you,” Steve responds, his blue eyes clouded and glazed as they still stare up at the ceiling. “It’s going to hurt you if you touch it.” He’s not talking about the book anymore, is he? That sounds too vague and solemn for it to be just about the book. 

“Is it yours?” Tony asks, his eyes firmly focused on the book. Maybe because it hurts just to see the blankness on Steve’s face. 

Steve glances over to the book, his eyes still vacant. “Stay from it, it’ll burn anyone but me.” 

_____ 

“Okay,” Tony snaps at him. “Are we talking about this strange book or you?” 

“If I was talking about me,” Steve says instead, looking up to see both of his friends, “I might tell you the same thing. But you didn’t ask about me. And you’re not going to ask. You’re not.” 

“You sound sure about that,” Tony frowns. “But I’m going to ask anyway.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve says, sweeping over Bucky and Tony’s looming figures. Familiar figures, with how much he sees them and how often he draws them. Too familiar, he thinks now, that it won’t end good if he keeps going in that direction.  

“You know, she’s right,” Bucky says. “You think that you’re not the person that we really want. You think that there’s some scary part of you that’s somehow going to scare us off and something.” 

“I don’t do relationships,” Steve says, almost interrupting Bucky, because it’s true. 

Both Tony and Bucky scoff at him. 

“Oh, and I do?” Tony asks. “I don’t even know how I’ve made it this far with Bucky, and you think you’re bad? I’m starting to think you’ve never listened to Pepper’s stories about me.” 

“Shut up,” Bucky says to Tony, “I didn’t do relationships, long ones, any more than you did. And you’re...” 

Steve tunes Bucky out while he’s reassuring Tony about every good thing about him. There’s things he knows, there’s things he can guess at, and there’s things he has absolutely no business knowing. 

_____

Wanda walks into a heated discussion between Bucky, Tony, and Steve and sees Bucky animatedly ranting (is ranting the right word?) about something. Steve looks as if he is tuning Bucky out and Tony looks as if he is halfway to either shutting Bucky up or kissing him. 

Wanda promptly walks out. This conversation is not for her. At least, not if she wants to nurse the headache the three of them cause her by projecting their emotions too loudly. Ow. 

_____ 

Suddenly, Steve vaults himself off the sofa, seemingly filled with energy if he avoids Steve’s hollow, glassy eyes. Those blue eyes should never be like this, Tiny thinks, especially when he’s seen them bright and sparking with laughter and not a ghost in sight. He’s seen those eyes crinkle with light, bringing life to an entire team and trying to keep so many afloat. Tony knows what those eyes are capable of, and this should just not be it. It look _wrong_. 

“This is not going to end any different,” Steve says to them, effectively shutting Bucky up. “This will never end up any different.” 

“Stop lying to us,” Tony counters, a little harshly, because blunt seems to be the way to get something through to Steve, if Steve’s talk with Wanda was any indication. “Because we heard all of that. All of it.” 

A bitter expression— _wrong_ , _wrong_ , _wrong_ , _wrong_ , so _wrong_ —flashes across Steve’s face. “Great,” Steve says, “ _Fantastic_. You’ve heard all of it. Then you've got to know that I'm not good for you, that I'll end up _hurting_ you.'

He sounds like he believes it too, that's the sad part, Tony thinks. Somewhere, something's wormed its way into Steve's mind that he's the bad one, the one that all of them should fear. Tony almost wants to laugh. Steve, who has nowhere near the blood on him like either Tony or Bucky (even though Steve tells them constantly that it's not really them), and Steve, who has given his entire being to helping the both of them out. How could he ever possibly think he would end up hurting them? 

So Tony asks. And Steve stares at him with a sad, knowing expression.

_____

Steve glances at the damning journal in response. He knows that if either of them read even a single page, they would not be asking this question. Never again would this conversation happen, for better or for worse. Or if they knew about the two business cards in his wallet, not including the lilac one that he thinks everyone knows about by now. Both of them are equally damning: one a lawyer's card and one a card with three different scientists' numbers and information. Both of them are two divergent paths of the same issue: one a best case scenario and one a worst case scenario that he needs to be prepared for. 

Either way, he has all three cards (now including the lilac one) memorized. How could he not?

_____

"It wouldn't be fair," Steve responds after looking at the damned magical book for too long. "To either of you."

"But why not?" Bucky asks, because Steve's been dancing around this for too long. Why fucking not?

_____

Steve stares into both sets of wounded, concerned eyes and almost flinches when he sees how much he's hurting them right now. Why can't they see that? Why can't they see how much they're being hurt by him? Why can't they let go? 

Instantly it hits him on how hypocritical this is. _He_ can't let go. _He_ can't bring himself to stop. _He_ can't tell himself to stay away, and keep away no matter how much he tries to. 

Worse of all, he's starting to realize that he keeps suckering them in. He keeps suckering himself in, too. 

_____

"But why not?" Bucky asks. 

Steve sighs and stares at both of them like he's having a conversation all by himself in his mind. It's not a pleasant conversation. This is something dark and heavy, poisoning all of Steve's thoughts. 

Steve sinks back down onto the sofa. "Okay," he tiredly says. "You know what? I thought that I could keep myself away, and maybe that I could keep you from wanting something with me, and I've failed both." 

This doesn't sound good, Bucky thinks, but this sounds like an explanation. 

_____

"The serum's failing," Steve says, "For years. I'm dying."

_____

Speechless is something that Tony has rarely been. Being speechless is like admitting that someone else has left an impression on you, and when you're a billionaire genius, there's a certain reputation you have to keep. Namely, that people seldom leave impressions on you. Which means that being speechless is not an option, not like it ever was with Tony's fast-thinking lines and quick responses. 

Speechless is something that Tony doubts Bucky has ever been. He knows that Bucky's always got a quick jab or response for anything as well, and that he knows how to make light of almost anything. Well, now. Still, Tony knows the story of Bucky just rolling with Steve's serum-enhanced changes, and of Bucky thinking and processing situations enough to respond quick. Anger, joy, surprise, pain, or whatever, he processes them fast. 

Either way, even given all that, neither of them talk when Steve does. 

But, honestly, what does someone say when they find out that one of the people they love is dying and that they have no clue on when they'll die? What does someone say to that?

_____

"Technically SHIELD knows. Two SHIELD scientists figured it out," Steve sighs, "I was supposed to—'' 

''Do these two scientists happen to be on Coulson's super-secret team that none of us have ever met but vaguely know the existence of?" Tony asks, talking for the first time that Steve's started to ramble on. Steve blinks once, because that is exactly it. FitzSimmons.

_____

Leave it to Steve to meet Coulson's team without the rest of them, Bucky thinks. Leave it to Steve to also possibly run missions with them and actually interact with them. If the situation wasn't like this, where Steve isn't _fucking dying_ , Bucky would be impressed. 

_____

"Wanda knows,” he says, “Because Loki knows. Apparently he figured it out after he fixed Amora’s damage and then told her.” 

“She kept yelling at you about time,” Bucky says in realization. 

_____

Somewhere in a room across the Compound, Wanda feels the removal of a heavy weight, accompanied by waves of shock. 

She has no time to smile, though, because she is being mercilessly defeated at chess by Natasha, who is determined to find out what Wanda did to her. 

_____

“So you’re just going to die,” Tony says flatly, trying to wrap his entire mind around what Steve has been saying. “And you haven’t done anything about it. Or life, in general.” 

Tony knows what it feels like when you think you’re dying. He knows the exact kind of mindframe that people fall into, and what they start doing. Now that he thinks about it, this is exactly what Steve has been doing. 

“What do you want me to do?” Steve asks, anger flaring up in his voice. “I don’t know if I’ll make it into the next day and you want me to to promise you a tomorrow? I _can’t_. Not unless F—the scientists figure something out.” 

“Your punk ass did not survive this long to be taken down by itself,” Bucky says fixedly, crossing his arms. “And who’s asking about tomorrow? We’re asking today. And you’re here, aren’t you? Right now, right here.” 

“He’s right,” Tony says, shooting his boyfriend a look. 

“I just—” Steve shakes his head, and Tony has a sinking feeling they’ve lost this conversation. “Don’t. You know I can’t.” 

_____ 

Steve’s phone rings from the back pocket of Wanda’s pants. It is most distinctively his phone, because no one else has a random Irish drinking song as their ringtone courtesy of Tony. Well, for this week, anyway. 

Wanda calmly picks it up and then gives a pointed look at Natasha. 

“Romanoff,” Natasha says into the phone, looking at the caller ID and seeing an unrecognizable number. 

“You know that you’re Rogers’s medical proxy, right? You and Wilson?” Hill’s unmistakable voice rings back, brusque as ever. She doesn’t sound the least bit fazed that she isn’t Steve speaking currently. 

“Yes,” Natasha says. That has been true since Steve took the position at D.C. and the Triskelion. She knows. Trust her, she knows. 

She hears Hill sigh from the other end. “You might want to sit down,” Hill, no, Maria, says. “As a friend.” 

_____

“ROGERS!” Steve hears someone curse, just as Tony and Bucky turn back to him. It’s Natasha, and she sounds absolutely murderous. Even more shockingly, he hears her loud footsteps, along with Wanda’s more cautious ones. 

_____

The first thing she does when she sees him is punch him, hard, and in his surprise, Steve stumbles back a little. Then she curses at him in every language that comes to mind, pure anger and concern expressing themselves in ways that she’s just a little uncomfortable with. Natasha’s not used to the feeling she had when Maria told her about the serum, something that left her hollower than a bird’s bones. 

But she pauses. Natasha stares at him, fully aware of the three other people in this room who have never seen her like this. Why would they? She’s never seen herself like this. Then she sighs. 

“Natasha,” Steve says shakily, eyes widened, the smallest of tears starting to form. He knows that she knows. 

“You weren’t even going to say anything, were you?” Natasha asks, but she doesn’t want to know the answer. Not this time. “Not until you had to.” 

Steve freezes, and she has her answer right there. Natasha’s a damned fool, she should have noticed it. It all adds up, everything from him stepping down to him refusing Tony and Bucky’s advances, despite the fact he pulled himself out of self-imposed retirement to save Tony

_____ 

The only reason Natasha would find out is if Maria called her. And the only reason Maria would have called is—

“When?” Steve asks, looking at Wanda, who has less of a poker face than Natasha in response to his question. He’s not quite sure what he’s asking, given that Maria’s call could have gone two ways, but he’s about to find out. Either they’ve found a cure or they won’t. 

“They’re on their way,” Natasha says, but something in Wanda’s expression shifts, telling him that there’s more to the story. He doesn’t let himself breathe just yet. 

Wanda notices him looking at her for better answers and bites her lip, shrugging. “They’re not sure,” she says. “If—it’s not—” 

“Oh,” Steve says. But everything has changed, suddenly. Suddenly, there’s— 

_____ 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Agent Agent and his team are coming over... because they think they have a cure?” Tony asks, feeling like he’s been hit with a rollercoaster. “What are the odds?” No one answers him. He doesn’t think any of them know.

Steve stands there, frozen in surprise. He doesn’t say anything, and for a second Tony wonders if the silence is bad news. Bad news for Steve, and bad news for the future. 

But then Steve glances back at him and Bucky, then forwards to Natasha and Wanda. Then back, and forwards, back, and forwards. Every time he deliberates, the more Tony can tell that Steve _knows_ the odds. They’re not good for him, if the silence is indication of anything. But the last time Steve looks back, Tony knows he’s made up his mind this time. Steve looks determined. 

Like maybe he’s going to win. Like maybe he _wants_ to win. 

_____ 

Steve knows the odds don’t look good for him either way. FitzSimmons’ solution might not work. Even if it did, they had already warned them that future solutions could mean de-seruming him either accidentally or purposefully. Future solutions, they had said, could also mean that he dies without the serum to support him. Even fixing the serum could cause problems, since restoring it means pushing the clock back farther, but not completely. There’s so much that could go wrong. 

But for the first time in this brand new 21st-century life, he feels a lot like the guy who had walked into that gambling chamber. Back then, the odds weren’t exactly in his favor, and he had stubbornly changed them each and every time—until Bucky fell. Until Bucky fell and his winning streak had crumbled, leaving him in the crippling emotional debt he still has. 

For the first time this century, he’s got something to look forward to having. He’s got a reason to play this game and bluff as hard as he can. Nothing is certain in this unsteady, collapsible moment, but Steve thinks he has a world he can try to keep. 

“What are the odds?” Steve hears at some point, from Tony.

Awful, but that’s exactly how he likes them. 

_____

Wanda knows what he is about to say before he says it. And then he says it, but there’s a light in his eyes that she hasn’t ever seen in him before. Not happy, not diabolical, not mischievous, but some twisted combination of the three.

The worst part is that no one can tell him any different, not when this is his only chance to live as long as he can. Not when all of them desperately want Steve to live. For Tony and Bucky, a shot at happiness after all with Steve, the last missing spark to their fire. For Natasha, a longer time with someone she considers her younger brother, the same as Wanda, who considers Steve an older brother. 

_____

That night, he tells the entire team. The next morning, Coulson’s team arrives, with Maria and Sharon. 

_____

There’s a certain luxury afforded to being the boss, to being your own person, to not being bound to a group of people, and to not having severe attachments to others. Well, at least visibly, to the latter two. It affords you to slip in and out of the grand scheme of things, and to talk to whomever you please, without anyone wanting to talk to you. Maybe that stings to some people, to be left alone, but not her. 

Being the constant to both the Avengers and Coulson’s team, she’s not really wanted, or swept up in the madness that is Stark and Skye, or Banner talking to Fitz and Simmons, or May and Romanoff sparring, or Carter and Triplett telling Wilson Legacy-earned stories about Rogers. 

She smiles, watching people scatter and become acquainted with each other, and promptly frowns when she notices the absence of one person. Rogers. 

_____

**from mh**

Where are you? 

**to mh**

Where no one else is. 

**from mh**

Brooding? You know if you’re at the gym, you won’t be alone for longer. 

**to mh**

May and Natasha? Yeah, I figured. 

**from mh**

You know, I can see you standing right now. 

_____

Maria sees Steve glance back from where he’s standing on the balcony, rolling his eyes at her. She takes that as cue to step onto the platform. It hadn’t been hard to find him, not really, not when she thought about it.

“JARVIS, mute, privacy protocols,” she says into the air as she walks out and meets the cool air outside. stops in front of Steve, as he leans against the railing like someone who knows they won’t fall. Dangerous, she thinks, given his terrible history, but completely expected also given his history of tempting fate.

“You didn’t even need to ask,” he smirks, though he’s guarded, something dark all around him. If Maria was a poet, she’d call it death with a capital letter and call it a night, but she isn’t. She’s a world-weary woman who works with former-military and scarred agents constantly; she calls that darkness foresight. 

Maria shrugs, wondering if she made the wrong choice to come up here as a friend and not as his former boss. “You know that’s not what I was asking.” 

Steve relaxes ever-so-slightly under her eyes, or maybe she’s under his dark blue ones. Either way, she’s glad she asked if he even wanted to talk, instead of brooding up here like he probabaky has done countless times. “Like I said, _you_ don’t need to ask.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I wake you up at three,” she quips, a pointed reference to last time this had happened, and she listened to two minutes of curses before he had greeted her. It’s changing the topic completely, but Steve quietly laughs anyway, so she’ll take it. “Or one.” 

“You know that’s not what you were asking,” Steve parrots back. Neither of them mention how she referenced a future call. It’s probably best not to think about it. Except that they have to. 

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll ask this: are you sure?” 

“I am,” he says, and then he smiles. “No else is, though.” 

“Either way, you either live or you’re out of my hair,” she tells him. Truth be told, she thinks he’ll walk away from it quite alright. He’s stubborn and has spent most his time in this century giving her stress ulcers over his decisions. He always walks away fine, or at least physically fine, and she’s the one getting white hairs that absolutely do not exist. 

He doesn’t say anything, observing her curiously, before something registers in his mind. Steve stands up a little straighter, leaning against the barrier a little less. Now Steve regards her speculatively. “I don’t think I’ve ever apologized,” he slowly says. 

“For?” she asks. There have been too many things over the years he could apologize for, but none that she would hold against him. Well, besides the whole ‘bye-bye SHIELD career’ but that was fixable. Once again, she has a job doing just what makes her sleep (and not sleep) at night. 

“The helicarrier,” he answers. “Telling you to fire.” 

She doesn’t know quite what to say to that. “I make hard decisions every day,” Maria says instead. “Trust me, you don’t have to apologize. Both of us know I don’t feel bad. Do you?” 

“Maybe I feel bad because I knew you wouldn’t have felt that bad,” Steve says. 

Maria huffs a laugh, bitter and jaded. “I don’t have the luxury of caring.” She doesn’t say anything else after that, and neither does Steve, because they both know that Steve has that luxury. 

_____ 

“Be honest for a second. Why didn’t you tell any of us before?” 

“Are you asking as a friend or...?” 

“Maria.” 

“You know why.” 

“You mean I know _who_.” 

“If you know the who, you know the why, Nat.” 

“Who else knows?” 

“Before, there used to be six people in SHIELD who knew specifically, including Rogers.” 

“Coulson?” 

“Carter.“

_____ 

He sits down with both scientists, to figure just what exactly they’ve discovered. It’s clear that they’re uncertain, but also that they’re trying not to be, for his sake. Steve appreciates it, and the fact that they’re dumbing this down as much as possible. 

“There’s no telling,” Jemma says, fiddling with her hands, working while talking. “Some of the tests came back with the serum gone, some of them died, and some of them worked.” 

“I’ve got 1:2 odds?” Steve asks, disbelieving. 

Leo pulls a face. “Not quite. Some tests came back negative. And statistically, your odds are more 3:67.” 

Steve looks at them, both decades younger than him and also exactly his age. Maybe even older by months, depending on how the math cracked down. And yet, they’re both incredibly young and bright—or maybe it’s just the two of them and their dedication to science. Still, there’s no mistaking their hesitance, or their optimism that everything will be alright given time. He can see it, see that they’re planning on telling him that his odds are going to be better given time to let them fix out the kinks. 

“I’ve done better with worse odds,” he offers. 

_____

The way that Steve understands it, it actually isn’t that the serum is failing. The serum was designed for the perfect super-soldier, which meant that he neither aged nor took a long time to heal wounds. One of the benefits stalled cell division, and the other speeded it up immensely—apparently the dichotomy is the reason that the serum is fighting with itself. Somehow, the part of the serum that kept him from aging won out. 

It isn’t that Steve still doesn’t heal freakishly fast, it’s that those recovery rates are dropping and the energy it takes to recover is exponentially increasing. Not to mention that if he does end up having to heal, his body stalls a lot after. Again, the way he understands it, one of these days, it’s going to be too much and he’s just not going to wake up. If he loses more than he can possibly recover, well, it’s game over. 

Originally, he was told to stay away from massively hurting himself because that was the only window of danger. Now—now it’s anything from a paper cut to a battle that could trigger stasis. Apparently something in the serum’s fight with itself started to trigger unusual cell division, like the kind linked with cancer and Alzheimer’s. 

To fix the serum is to fix so much more. 

_____ 

Natasha doesn’t actually mean to eavesdrop this time, but she hears snippets come from the kitchen, which was where she was headed anyway. The first voice in unmistakably Steve, and the second Maria Hill. Neither of them sound too happy with each other. 

“Please?” Steve asks, close to begging desperately, in a way she hasn’t heard him do before. “Come on, ‘Ria, please.” 

Someone hums, presumably Hill. “You’re a shameless old man.” This surprises Natasha, who assumed the nature of their conversation to be actually serious, and not whatever this is. “Keep it up and I’ll cut your breathing tube.” 

Steve gasps, theatrically. “Then how on Earth am I supposed to fulfill my end of the deal?”

Natasha’s interest piques, as if to wonder, _what_ _deal_? What exactly is going on between these two? Wanda had mentioned they were secretly together, but were they still—? If not, when had this happened? 

“You won’t, and neither will I,” Hill says. “Or maybe I will and you’ll miss it all, since you’ll finally be six feet in the ground.” 

“You’re not getting anything from me if I die,” Steve says without missing a beat. “Actually, there’s a specific clause saying that you’re to keep your hands off. I fucking hate you.” This is the first Natasha’s hearing of a will; how long has Steve been accustoming himself to death? How long has he kept it to himself like this? 

There’s a long silence, and then she hears the sound of two people kissing. Natasha decides that there’s no way she’s sticking around for whatever this is. 

_____ 

“You really do hate me,” Maria teases him once they pull away. “That felt like some concrete, _hard_ hatred.” 

Steve doesn’t let himself rise to the bait. “Apparently I’m a shameless old man. Gotta get my kicks somewhere.” He probabaly earned that comment anyway, but still, it’s fun to throw her words back at her. Fun, and just a little vengeful, since she does the same to him. What a matched, fucked-up pair they were. 

“You know this is a bad idea,” she says, looking up to him with a wry twist to her lips. 

“I can’t hear you over the sound of your own hypocrisy,” he tells her, and after that, they don’t do much talking. 

_____ 

“Where’s Steve?” 

“Occupied.”

”Occupied? With what? What could he possibly be doing?” 

“Not sure you want to know.” 

“I asked for a reason, Natasha.” 

“He’s probably in bed.” 

“I didn’t know you started making old jokes at him.” 

“I didn’t.” 

_____ 

“I need to ask you a question.” 

“Okay?” 

“How long were Steve and Maria together?” 

“Why would you think I know?” 

“You knew about them.” 

“I didn’t mean they loved each other.” 

“Dating, then, whatever.” 

“They weren’t dating.” 

“What?” 

_____ 

Elsewhere, two people know that this will be their last time, for real. This time, their paths split for good. 

_____ 

When Steve walks out of his room freshly showered and just a little more grounded with all the change in his life, he doesn’t expect an audience waiting for him. And then he realizes that he hadn’t been hallucinating the heartbeat outside the kitchen earlier. Maria’s not going to be happy. 

_____

She knows that Steve knows she’s there, even before he opens the door. His unchanged expression when he sees her only confirms that. Steve probably has heard her before, too, and this is one of the things that will never stop bothering her about Steve. Natasha likes being stealthy, and invisible. But she is never invisible to Steve. 

“I don’t have any answers for you,” he bluntly tells her. But the way he stops, and sits across from her says otherwise. 

Natasha shrugs. “I don’t need you to answer anything for me. Just, do you know what you’re doing?” 

_____

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on my [tumblr](https://butonlyifyourecounting.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
